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Boy Scouts in the Dismal Swamp 


By 

WALTER P. EATON 


The Boy Scouts of Berkshire — A story 
of how the Chipmunk Patrol was started, 
what they did and how they did it. 

With colored frontispiece. Price $ 1 . 00 net. 

This volume is in “The Boy’s 
Dollar Bookshelf.’* 


I 


.vii 








Boy Scouts in the 
Dismal Swamp 


By 

WALTER PRICHARD EATON 

Illustrated by 
CHARLES COPELAND 



W. A. WILDE COMPANY 


BOSTON 


CHICAGO 



rz. 

\ 


Copyrighted, ipjj 
By W. A. Wilde Company 
All rights reserved 

Boy Scouts in the Dismal Swamp 




©CI,A358744 


To 

WALTER KING STONE 
Artist Scout- Master and Swamper 








Contents 


I. Peanut has an Idea . . . .13 

II. Saving up Money 22 

III. Studying How to Study ... 29 

IV. All Aboard for the Swamp . . 32 

V. Peanut’s First Taste of the Ocean . 45 

VI. Up the Dismal Swamp Canal . . 52 

VII. A Mystery in the Night ... 62 

VIII. The Lake of the Dismal Swamp . . 71 

IX. A Lesson in Geology . . . .91 

X. A Grunting Bear and a 'Coon Supper . 99 

XI. Lost in the Great Swamp . . .114 

XII. Rain, and the Water Rising . .122 

XIII. A Wild Night in the Swamp, and 

Rescue 126 

XIV. Peanut as a Policeman . . . .142 

XV. When Is It Right to Break the Law? 150 

XVI. Good-bye to the Wilderness . . 165 

XVII. Peanut’s Heart Is Hit . . . .177 

XVIII. The Boys See “ Julius CiESAR ” . . 182 

XIX. Telling About the Trip . . .194 

XX. Something New FOR Scout Work . . 199 

9 


10 


CONTENTS 


XXI. 

A Slump in Scout Enthusiasm . 

2 II 

XXIL 

The Lesson in Forestry 

224 

XXIII. 

Completing the Log Cabin 

241 

XXIV. 

The Fight 

257 

XXV. 

Why Peanut Didn’t Go to the Swamp 



Again . . . . 

274 

XXVI. 

Art Is Off For That Bear 

279 

XXVII. 

Art Gets His Bear .... 

287 

XXVIII. 

Out of the Swamp for Good 

296 


Boy Scouts in the Dismal 
Swamp 


CHAPTER I 

Peanut Has an Idea 

P EANUT MORRISON was hanging by his legs 
from a trapeze in the Southmead Scout House 
when the idea came to him. Arthur Bruce said 
afterward that the idea must have been in his feet all 
the while, and slipped down into his head when he 
hung from the bar. 

Grasping the trapeze again with his hands, Peanut 
slowly skun the cat and came up into a sitting posture. 
“Say, fellers,” he announced, “Tve got an idea!” 
“ Does it hurt you much ? ” asked Willie Walker. 
Peanut ignored the comment. 

“ WeVe hiked all around here,” he continued. “ I 
could find my way anywhere within ten miles of 
Southmead in the middle of the night. Let’s save 
up money this winter and go off some place, way 
off, next spring. I want to see something new.” 

“ Hooray I ” cried Art. “ Where'll we go ? ” 

13 


14 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

‘‘ Oh, anywhere, just off,” Peanut replied — the 
Rocky Mountains or by the ocean. Gee, I’ve never 
seen the ocean 1 ” 

“ Why don’t you go to Europe, Peanut, and hike 
across the Alps? ” asked Teddy Bear Bolton, one of 
the older scouts, who had stopped playing hand- 
ball to listen. ‘‘ You could do it for four or five 
hundred dollars. You can save up that much before 
spring, can’t you ? ” 

“You give me a pain,” Peanut retorted, losing his 
habitual good nature for a moment. He was really 
enthusiastic over his new idea, and resented the 
Teddy Bear’s sarcasm. 

He swung off the trapeze and left the Scout 
House. Art Bruce came out behind him, and the 
two walked away down the street. They were both 
freshmen in the high school, and inseparable chums. 

“ They’re a bunch of stiffs,” Peanut said hotly. 
“ What’s the use of sticking in the mud all the 
time ? Here’s the whole United States, and we’ve 
never got outside of Berkshire County, Massachu- 
setts, but once, and then only into the next county. 
I’ll bet it wouldn’t cost much to go somewhereP 

“ Let’s go ask Mr. Rogers,” suggested Art, cheer- 
fully. 

Mr. Rogers was the scout master. He was a 


PEANUT HAS AN IDEA 


15 


good man for scout master, not only because he 
was young and athletic, but because he was an 
artist, and so he could work when he felt like it, or 
take a day or two off for a hike with the scouts when 
he felt like doing that. He had formerly lived in 
New York, and still went down there frequently, but 
he liked the outdoor life of the country better, and 
made his home in Southmead, amid the Berkshire 
hills. 

It was late in the gray November afternoon when 
the two boys rang his door-bell. 

‘‘ I guess you’ll find Mr. Rogers still out in his 
studio, boys,” said Mrs. Rogers. 

Peanut and Art went around behind the house to 
the studio, which was a small, separate building, 
with only one window — a big one in the roof toward 
the north. 

“ Come in I ” shouted a voice. 

The boys entered. The studio was dim. Mr. 
Rogers had stopped working, and was sitting before 
a glowing fire. 

‘‘ Hello, boys,” he cried, cheerfully, rising to greet 
them. ‘‘ Come in and squat.” 

Peanut, who, as Art once said, sniffed at everything 
like a dog, began at once snooping about the room. 
He was never happy anywhere till his curiosity had 


i6 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


been satisfied. In the fading light under the studio 
window stood Mr. Rogers’ easel, and on it a large 
drawing — of a strange tree, coming up out of the 
water on a tent of roots, and then rising with a quick- 
tapering trunk and throwing off long branches of 
delicate foliage. Peanut had never seen a tree like 
it. It looked very old and mysterious. 

“ Say,” he cried, “ what kind of a tree is this? ” 
“That?” said Mr. Rogers, turning. “Oh, that is 
a bald cypress, down in the Dismal Swamp of 
Virginia. I’m doing some illustrations for a mag- 
azine article about Southern swamps.” 

“ But how can you draw it,” asked Art, “ sitting in 
here, when the trees are in Virginia ? ” 

Mr. Rogers laughed. “ How can you whistle a 
tune you heard last summer? ” 

“ He can’t,” said Peanut. 

Mr. Rogers laughed again. “Well, how can you 
tell me what somebody said to you last summer? 
You remember, don’t you? Well, I remember 
what the cypresses look like, and draw my mental 
picture. That’s what artists’ heads are full of — mental 
pictures. I spent a week in the Dismal Swamp not 
many years ago. In fact, I was sitting here thinking 
about the Swamp when you boys came in. It’s a 
wonderful place.” 


PEANUT HAS AN IDPfA 


17 


“ That makes me think what we came for,” said 
Peanut, plopping down on the floor in front of the 
fireplace. “ We want to go to some place way off, 
in the spring — some new place, that’s different and 
— and exciting. Couldn’t you take us to the Dismal 
Swamp ?” 

“All of you?” said Mr. Rogers. 

“ Aw, the stiffs I ” cried Peanut. “ They won’t 
save up to go ! No, just Art an’ me an’ any who’ll 
save up enough this winter. Please do, Mr. 
Rogers ! ” 

“ I’d have to think that over pretty carefully,” the 
man answered. 

“ What could we get to the Dismal Swamp for?” 
asked Art. 

Mr. Rogers got up, switched on the electric light, 
took a pad and pencil, and began to figure. 

“ Let’s see,” he said. “ The round trip fare to 
New York is $5.60. Then you’ve got to get across 
the city with your luggage — say fifty cents. The 
round trip by boat to Norfolk ” 

“ By boat I ” cried Peanut. “ Me for that ! I’ve 
never seen the ocean ! Never seen New York either, 
for that matter.” 

“ Round trip by boat is $7.00,” the man continued, 
“and maybe you’ll get all the ocean you want! 


i8 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


Then you’ve got to spend $2.00 more getting in and 
out of the Swamp, and say $1.00 apiece boat hire in 
there, and say $2.00 for grub and another $ 2.00 
extras. Then, after the extras, you want $2.00 more 
for extra extras, which always turn up at the last 
moment. That makes $ 22 . 10 , As you’ll have to 
buy some clothes and things before you start, prob- 
ably, you’ll need about $25.00 apiece. That ought 
to get you down there and back for a week’s trip. 
But you can’t go in after school closes, boys, because 
it’s too hot, and the Swamp is full of yellow flies. 
You’ll have to go in during May. How can you get 
away from school?” 

“ Couldn’t we go in Easter vacation ? ” Art asked. 

Too early — too wet and too cold,” Mr. Rogers 
replied, shaking his head. 

“ Oh, we can fix the school somehow,” cried Pea- 
nut. “And we can save $25.00, Art, can’t we?” 

“ I — I guess so,” said the latter, somewhat dubi- 
ously. 

“Well, / can,” Peanut declared ; “and I’m going 
if I have to go alone ! ” 

“Do you know anything about the Dismal 
Swamp ? ” Mr. Rogers smiled. 

“No more’n I do gibovit algebra,” Peanut re- 


PEANUT HAS AN IDEA 


19 

** But you study algebra,” said the scout 
master. 

“Gee, and that’s all the good it does!” sighed 
the boy. 

Mr. Rogers got up again and took down a book 
from the case. “I’ll read you a poem about the 
Swamp,” he said. 

Art and Peanut exchanged covert looks of dismay. 
They both regarded poetry as nonsense. 

Mr. Rogers came back to his chair. “ This poem 
was written nearly a hundred years ago,” he went 
on, “ by an Irish poet named Tom Moore, who 
heard the Indian legend he put into his poem while 
he was visiting over here at Norfolk, Virginia, which 
is near the Swamp. Now listen.” 

Then the scout master read them this poem : 

* They made her a grave, too cold and damp 
For a soul so warm and true ; 

And she’s gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp, 
Where, all night long, by a firefly lamp, 

She paddles her white canoe. 

<< * And her firefly lamp I soon shall see, 

And her paddle I soon shall hear ; 

Long and loving our life shall be. 

And I’ll hide the maid in a cypress tree, 

When the footstep of death is near.’ 


BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

“ Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds — 

His path was rugged and sore, 

Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds. 

Through many a fen, where the serpent feeds. 

And man never trod before. 

‘‘And, when on the earth he sunk to sleep. 

If slumber his eyelids knew. 

He lay where the deadly vine doth weep 
Its venomous tear and nightly steep 
The flesh with blistering dew ! 

“And near him the she-wolf stirr’d the brake. 

And the copper- snake breath’d in his ear. 

Till he starting cried, from his dream awake, 

‘ Oh ! when shall I see the dusky Lake, 

And the white canoe of my dear ? ’ 

“ He saw the Lake, and a meteor bright 
Quick over its surface play’d — 

‘ Welcome,’ he said, ‘ my dear-one’s light I ’ 

And the dim shore echoed, for many a night, 

The name of the death-cold maid. 

“ Till he hollow’d a boat of the birchen bark. 

Which carried him off from shore ; 

Far, far he followed the meteor spark. 

The wind was high and the clouds were dark. 

And the boat return’d no more. 

“ But oft, from the Indian hunter’s camp 
This lover and maid so true 
Are seen at the hour of midnight damp 
To cross the Lake by a firefly lamp. 

And paddle their white canoe I ” 


PEANUT HAS AN IDEA 


21 


Peanut’s eyes grew large as he listened. “ That’s 
some poem, believe me, judge ! ” he cried. Miss 
Brown don’t read poems that way in school.” 

“ She doesn’t read that kind of poems,” said Art. 
“ She reads, oh, moral sort of poems.” 

“And is the Dismal Swamp kind of — of lonely 
like that ? ” asked Peanut. 

“You bet it is,” said Mr. Rogers. “ Lonely and 
yet very lovely. The poem doesn’t say much about 
the cypress trees, either, nor the bears, nor the deer, 
nor the turkey-buzzards.” 

“ Bears I ” cried Art. “Wow 1 I’d like to get a 
crack at a bear 1 ” 

“ Well, me for the Swamp 1 ” said Peanut. 

“You boys go to the public library and get a 
book called ‘ Dred,’ by Harriet Beecher Stowe, who 
wrote ‘ Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ ” said the scout master, 
“ and you read that. It will give you some idea of 
the Swamp. After you’ve read it, we’ll talk some 
more, — perhaps.’* 

“ Come on. Art,” said Peanut. ‘‘ The library don’t 
close till six.” 

“ If you’re going to the library, you ought to say 
‘ doesnH^ ” laughed the scout master. 

“ I’m too excited,” cried Peanut, as he vanished 
through the door. 


CHAPTER II 


Saving Up Money 


HE two boys read “ Dred — A Tale of the Dismal 



-i- Swamp,” which nobody had taken out of the 
library for a long time. The last date stamped on 
the slip was 1899. When they had finished, they 
were more eager than ever to get to the Swamp. 
Of course, they knew that fugitive slaves, like Dred, 
no longer exist, to hide in the depths of the dismal 
jungle, but Mr. Rogers said the jungle was still 
there, nearly as wild and impenetrable as ever, and 
there were bears and deer, if no fugitive slaves and 
pursuing bloodhounds. The main thing was un- 
doubtedly how to save up the $25.00 apiece, needed 
to get there. 

Twenty-five dollars looked like a large sum to 
most of the scouts, especially as the golf links were 
closed for the winter and there was no chance to 
caddy. Peanut and Arthur were more imaginative 
than the majority of their fellows. They could pic- 
ture in their minds — especially after reading “ Dred ” 
and seeing Mr. Rogers' pictures — what the Swamp 


22 


SAVING UP MONEY 


23 


was perhaps like, and so they were more eager to 
go there. Did you know that your imagination is 
at the bottom of most things you accomplish in this 
world? Two boys, or two men, set out to do some- 
thing — build a hut in the woods or get elected 
governor, let us say. Well, the boy who can see 
that hut in his mind’s eye before it is built, and who 
can imagine the fun he’s going to have in it, will be, 
nine cases out of ten, the boy who’ll stick to the job 
of building it. And it’s the same with the man. 
The boy or the man who can look into to-morrow 
wins out. Art’s and Peanut’s imaginations had 
been fired by “ Dred ” and by Mr. Rogers. They 
stuck to their purpose of getting to the Swamp. 
But they couldn’t get any of the other boys aroused, 
except Rob Everts. Rob was the patrol leader 
of the Chipmunks. He was two and a half years 
older than Art and Peanut, and was now a high 
school senior. 

“ Sure, I’d love to go,” he said, “ but I’ve got my 
college entrance exams coming in June, and I don’t 
know whether I could take a week off in May. I 
can save the money, all right, because I’m doing all 
father’s typewriting at the bank, and get paid for it. 
I tell you. I’ll save up the coin, anyhow, and then if 
I hud I can go^ all right, I’ll be with you,’^ 


24 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

“ Hooray,” cried Peanut. “ That’s settled. Now 
me ’n’ Art have got to hustie.” 

At first Peanut decided to canvass for subscrip- 
tions to a magazine called The Home Life^ which 
offered large percentages to agents. He told Mr. 
Rogers of his purpose. 

“ You bring me a copy of the paper first,” the 
man said. 

Peanut brought it, and Mr. Rogers looked it 
over. 

“No good. Peanut,” he said. “You don’t want 
to ask folks to subscribe to this. Look here for 
yourself — it’s bad paper and bad type and poor pic- 
tures, and I can tell by a mere glance that the 
reading matter is cheap, too. Folks would rather 
subscribe to a good paper, and they’ll think a whole 
lot more of you if you ask ’em to. Remember, you 
are really selling magazines, and you don’t want to 
sell any but the best — or you’re a bad scout.” 

“ That’s right,” said Peanut. “ I only picked this 
one because it offered fifty per cent, to the agent.” 

“ If it was any good, it wouldn’t have to offer that 
much to agents,” the man replied. “ You go home 
and write to the circulation departments of three or 
four of the best popular magazines, and take the 
agency for them. Get a woman’s magazine, a good 


SAVING UP MONEY 


25 


story magazine, and a couple of general magazines, 
like the American^ or Scribner’ s, and then you’ll 
have something good to offer in every house in 
town. You give the circulation managers my name 
as reference.” 

Peanut did as directed. Doubtless Mr. Rogers’ 
name helped, and he soon found himself local sub- 
scription agent for four magazines. But it was not as 
easy as he thought it was going to be to get subscri- 
bers. A lot of people bought the magazines they 
wanted from^ month to month. Many more went to 
the public library to read them. Poor Peanut thought 
of all the arguments he could to induce them to sub- 
scribe, the chief one being that they got the magazine 
cheaper. But even so he found he wasn’t getting 
exactly rich. He would have to get over sixty sub- 
scribers to make $25.00, and many of them would 
have to subscribe to the higher priced magazines. 
As Christmas drew near, he found himself but $7.00 
richer than when he began — and he wanted some of 
that $7.00 to buy his mother’s and small brother’s 
Christmas presents with, too ! Then he had a happy 
idea. Why not get people to subscribe as presents 
to somebody else I 

He started right in subscribing to the woman’s 
magazine himself, as a present to his mother. Then 


26 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


he began his canvass all over again, and went far 
out of the village after school hours, into the country 
districts. The idea worked well. By Christmas day 
he had cleared $ 20 . 00 . The other five he knew he 
could earn between then and spring by helping 
out in one of the grocery stores on Saturdays. 

Meanwhile Art had found quite a different work. 
He went to all the well-to-do householders up and 
down the main street, told them why he wanted 
to earn the money, and asked for the job of 
clearing their paths of snow during the winter. 
Several people were glad to employ him, and on 
snowy mornings he was up by six o’clock, and 
worked like a beaver, digging out paths till school 
time. It was hard work, but Art was stocky and 
strong, and he stuck by his contracts. Every snow- 
storm meant about a dollar to him. Two or three 
people gave him added work splitting kindlings once 
a week, too, so that he had cleared almost $40.00 by 
the first week in March, when the last of the snow 
melted. 

Mr. Rogers watched the boys with much interest. 

“They are sticking it out like young beavers,” he 
said to his wife, “and I guess they deserve to go. 
Now comes the job of arranging it with their 
teachers.” 


SAVING UP MONEY 


27 


He wouldn’t give the boys a definite answer till 
April, however. Then he called them into his studio 
one afternoon. 

“ Well,” he said, “ have you got your $25.00? ” 

“I’ve got $27.23,” said Peanut, “and Art has 
’most $40.00.” 

“ Maybe you won’t need the twenty-three cents,” 
the scout master smiled. “That’s good work. 
You’ve stuck to your purpose now for five months. 
That’s what I like to see. But you’ve got one thing 
more to do before I’ll agree to go with you to the 
Swamp. We can’t have it said that anything in our 
scout work interferes with school work. That 
wouldn’t be right, would it ? ” 

“ No, sir,” they answered. 

“ Well, then, you boys have got to get up a full 
week’s work ahead in school before we leave, and let 
your teachers examine you in it. I don’t believe 
the principal would let you go, anyway, if you didn’t 
do this. But you must go to her and propose it 
yourselves.” 

“ Hully gee I ” cried Peanut, “ I can’t do that ! 
All I can do to get up one week at a time! Two — 
wow 1 ” 

“ Look here. Peanut,” said Mr. Rogers, “ you can 
do a whole lot more than you think you can. I 


28 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


don’t believe you ever really studied in your life. 
Will you do something for me?” 

“Sure — what?” 

“You come here next Saturday morning, with 
your Monday lessons, and you sit in that corner and 
study while I do my work, which is painting. We’ll 
both just stick to our jobs, and the first one that quits 
has got to pay a forfeit.” 

“ You’re on 1 ” said Peanut 

“ Can’t I come ? ” said Art. 

“All right,” laughed Mr. Rogers, “come on. 
Next Saturday at nine.” 

“ We’ll be there,” said the scouts. 


CHAPTER III 
Studying How to Study 


HE next Saturday at nine o’clock the two boys 



-I- appeared with their books. Peanut had an al- 
gebra and a copy of Shakespeare’s “ Julius Csesar.” 
Art had an English history and the Shakespeare. 

“ Let me see what you have to do,” said the scout 
master. 

“ Well,” said Art, “ there’s half the second act of 
the play to read, and I have six pages of history to 
learn.” 

“ Me, too, on the play,” Peanut said, and these 
five problems to work out.” 

“ Very well, go to it,” said the man. “ When you 
get Monday’s done, keep right on. Get on your 
marks, get set — go 1 ” 

He picked up his brushes and began to paint. 
The two boys settled down to study. There was 
silence for several moments. 

“ Golly, I can’t do this 1 ” suddenly came from Pea- 
nut’s corner. 

“ Silence ! ” roared Mr. Rogers. ** For that you’ve 
got to pull a mumblety-peg with your teeth I ” 


30 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

Peanut and Art both giggled — but Peanut went 
to work again. The man painted on industriously. 
Peanut looked longingly out of the open door two or 
three times. He heard several boys going by on their 
way to the baseball diamond. Then he looked at 
Mr. Rogers, who never stopped painting — and went 
back to his tasks. At half-past ten he put aside the 
algebra and took up the “Julius Caesar.” 

Mr. Rogers shot a glance at him. “ One word, Pea- 
nut,” he said. “ Don’t try to study that. Read it just 
as if it was a story. On your mark — get set — go ! ” 

Peanut began to read. Pretty soon he had for- 
gotten to look out of the door. He was in the midst 
of the story. Once he gave a low whistle. “ Some 
speech, that ! ” he muttered. 

But Mr. Rogers said nothing — he only smiled. 

At 12:30 the man laid down his brushes. 

“ Lunch time ! ” he shouted. “ We’ve all stuck to 
the job.” 

“ Aw, you quit first,” cried Peanut, jumping up, 
“ didn’t he. Art ? You’ve got to pay a forfeit, as well 
as me I ” 

“ All right, I’ll pull a peg, too. But first tell me 
how much you’ve done.” 

Peanut grinned a little sheepishly. “ I did ten 
problems in algebra instead of five, and I finished the 


STUDYING HOW TO STUDY 


31 

play. Gee, but that’s some speech of Antony’s, 
though I Made me sorry they killed old Caesar ! ” 

“You finished the play, eh, and you only had half 
an act to read for Monday, and you’ve studied 
only one morning? And you’ve got the nerve to 
come here and tell me you can’t get up a week’s 
work in advance 1 Peanut, you’re a fraud. How 
about you. Art ? ” 

“ I didn’t read beyond the third act in ‘ Julius 
Caesar,’ ” Art replied. 

“Why not?” 

“ Well,” — the boy rather blushed as he said it — 
“you see, the history got kind of interesting, all 
about the Roundheads and Cromwell, so that I read 
on to see how it came out, and when Charles II got 
back on the throne, I wanted to see what happened 
then, and I got to reading some more, up to William 
and Mary.” 

“ How many pages?” 

Art consulted the book. “ Forty,” he said. 

“ Forty ! and you had six to read ? You are both 
frauds. Get out of here I ” 

“ You pull that peg first ! ” cried Peanut. 

So the morning ended with Peanut and Mr. Rogers 
with their faces in the grass, pulling up pegs with 
their teeth, while Art danced about them in high glee. 


CHAPTER IV 

All Aboard for the Swamp 

H aving once got so far ahead in their school 
work, the boys discovered that it was per- 
fectly easy to keep ahead. By doing a little more 
than was required each day, they were soon a full 
week in advance. 

‘‘ Funny thing,” Peanut said, “ how much more 
you can do than you think you can do before you’ve 
done it I ” 

Having finished “Julius Caesar” long before the 
rest, Peanut had only to review it in class, and was 
already half-way into “ A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” 
He didn’t like this so well, because, as he put it, 
“ there’s too much love-making in it,” but he enjoyed 
it more after Mrs. Rogers sang and played some of 
Mendelssohn’s music, and after Mr. Rogers showed 
him some pictures of famous actors in the r61e of 
Bottom, wearing the ass’s head. Meanwhile Rob 
Everts, who was the best scholar in the high school, 
had also gone far ahead of the clasS: Indeed, he had 
to, because he was going to take his college entrance 
32 


ALL ABOARD FOR THE SWAMP 33 

examinations late in June, and needed his last few 
weeks to review in. But he had studied rather too 
hard, and his eyes had begun to trouble him. 

** The best thing you can do is to take a week’s 
rest,” the doctor told him. “ Live outdoors if you 
can, and don’t look at a book.” 

So Rob was ready to go to the Swamp, too. In 
fact, it was just what he ought to do. The high 
school principal was willing to let the other two boys 
off, providing they could prove that they had done 
their work in advance. She gave them a test one 
afternoon, and they came through successfully — ; 
somewhat to her surprise, perhaps. Nothing re- 
mained now but the actual preparations, and the get- 
away. 

The three boys met at the scout master’s to discuss 
equipment. They made out a list of things they 
would need, or wished to take, for a week in the 
Swamp, minus provisions. It was as follows : 

One large tent or two smaller tents. 

Two kettles. 

Two frying-pans. 

One collapsible water bucket. 

Four cups. 

Four plates. 

Four spoons. 

Four knives and forks. 


34 


BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


Hatchets. 

Blankets. 

Ponchos. 

Extra shirts and underclothes apiece. 

Extra pair heavy socks apiece. 

One camp lantern. 

Candles for same. 

Two pocket compasses. 

Camera and films. 

Firearms and ammunition. 

Piece of rope. 

Fishing tackle. 

Khaki scout clothes. 

Government map of Swamp. 

Note-books and pencils. 

One first aid kit. 

Two hunting knives. 

“ Don’t we want rubber boots ? ” asked Art. 

“No,” answered the scout master. “You want 
high leather boots, the higher the better. Better oil 
’em well, though, to make ’em as near waterproof as 
possible. We’ll be in a boat most of the time, and 
what little walking we can do, you’ll find dry. But 
there may be wet spots.” 

“I’ll have to buy a pair of boots,” said Peanut, 
sadly. “ I wore mine out last winter steering a 
toboggan.” 

“ First extra ! ” Mr. Rogers laughed. 

The scout master had a balloon silk tent large 
enough for two^ and Rob ha^d a small canvas tent, so 


ALL ABOARD FOR THE SWAMP 35 

it was not necessary to buy one. It was decided 
to pack the kit into two small trunks, as being 
easier to carry than one large one, and to carry 
the scout clothes in two hand-bags as far as New 
York. 

“We can leave our street clothes and the bags in 
the studio of a friend of mine in New York,” Mr. 
Rogers said, “ and put on our khaki there. We’ll 
have to spend a night in New York on our way 
back, so we’ll want our good suits. We’ll get our 
stock of provisions when we reach Norfolk.” 

Rob was to provide the camera, and Art the rifle. 
The scout master had an automatic pistol. Peanut 
did not possess a firearm, much to his chagrin, nor 
did he have money enough to buy one, but Art prom- 
ised him the use of the rifle. The rest of their equip- 
ment all the boys possessed. Mr. Rogers wrote to 
New York and reserved two staterooms on the Nor- 
folk boat leaving New York Friday afternoon, 
May 17th. 

“ We’ll have to take an extra day from school,” 
he said. “ I’m sorry, but we can’t get into the 
Swamp on Sunday, as there’s no steamer up the 
canal.” 

“ It almost breaks my heart,” said Peanut, winking 
at Art. 


36 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

The trunks were all packed Thursday, and the 
three boys were on the station platform at 7 : 45, 
waiting for the 8 : 10 train to New York. 

“ Sorry it goes so early, said Art. “ Fd like to 
see the other fellers going by to school.” 

“ Aw, the stiffs ! ” cried Peanut once more. 

Presently Mr. Rogers arrived with the trunks, and 
after him came the train. 

“ All aboard for the Dismal Swamp ! ” yelled Pea- 
nut, bounding up the steps. The engine labored, 
started, and they were off ! 

They passed through Bid well where the big fire 
had been a year before, and noted how nearly all the 
buildings had been replaced, often by better ones. 
They soon saw Mount Everett looming up in the 
southwest corner of the state, and could trace on its 
side the depression which marked the ravine up 
which they had once climbed to the summit. Then 
they entered Connecticut, and Peanut and Art were 
in new country. They remained with their faces at 
the window, gazing out 

Finally their train reached the main line on the 
shore of Long Island Sound, and they caught a 
glimpse of the salt water. From that point in to 
New York the towns grew denser ; there was less 
and less open country ; great advertising sign-boards 


ALL ABOARD FOR THE SWAMP 37 

lined the track on both sides. They were due in 
New York at noon, but some time before that all 
country had vanished. After the train crossed the 
Harlem River, it went up upon a raised track, and 
they looked down endless cross streets on either 
side, all exactly alike, and all lined with tall tene- 
ments. 

“ Holy smoke ! What a lot of houses ! ” cried 
Peanut. “ It’s like living in great boxes, stood on 
top of each other. Glad I don’t live there I ” 

A moment more, and the train entered the tunnel. 
It came out into daylight long enough for the boys 
to see the great hole deep down into the solid rock 
which was then being dug for the new Grand Central 
Station. Underneath them they could see trains of 
dirt cars passing to and fro. Level with them scores 
of other trains like theirs were going in or out. 
Above them they could see streets and tall buildings 
and people and teams. 

Art and Peanut gasped. Then the train slipped 
into the station. 

“ Now, bdys, I’ll blow you to a ride,” said the 
scout master. “We’ve got to be sure our trunks 
get to the steamer, and the only way to be sure is 
to carry them ourselves.” 

So, moving down the platform into the hurrying, 


38 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

bewildering throng in the station, they found a taxi- 
cab, got their two trunks aboard, piled in with their 
other luggage, and started away. 

The three boys were trying to see on all sides 
at once. The first thing they saw was the Forty- 
second Street elevated structure over their heads. 
A second later they saw a sign, ** Subway.^ ^ 

“Gosh,” exclaimed Peanut, “they go over and 
under and on the ground here, don’t they ? ” 

“ Wow, look at that building ! ” cried Art, point- 
ing at the Hotel Belmont. 

Peanut tipped his head far back till he saw the 
top of it. 

“ Some hut, that ! ” he whistled. 

“That’s not much — only twenty-three stories or 
so,” Mr. Rogers laughed. “I’ll take you to the 
top of a real skyscraper before the boat sails.” 

The taxicab was now whizzing down Park Ave- 
nue past the beautiful residences there. Mr„ Rogers 
spoke to the driver, and he cut through Thirty- 
fourth Street to Fifth Avenue, and turned down that, 
at the corner where the great red-brick cliff wall of 
the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel rises up. 

They were at once in a perfect river of motor cars, 
or, rather, two rivers, one on the right hand side 
flowing south, one on the left flowing north ; and 


ALL ABOARD FOR THE SWAMP 


39 


both sidewalks were black with people, tod, walking 
past the beautiful shop-windows. 

“ I didn’t know there were so many motor cars in 
the world ! ” exclaimed Rob. 

“ Say,” cried Peanut, “ this is 'most as busy as our 
Main Street on Saturday night ! ” 

A moment more, and they were in Madison 
Square, and at the instant when Peanut recognized 
the Flatiron Building, Art and Rob spied the tall 
white shaft of the Metropolitan Tower rising six 
hundred feet into the air. 

“ Now, there’s a building ! ” said the scout 
master. 

“ Is that the one we’re going to climb ? ” the boys 
asked. 

‘‘ No, still another, farther down town.” 

Now the cab had entered Fifth Avenue again, 
south of Madison Square, Mr. Rogers first pointing 
out the building where the National Headquarters 
of the Boy Scouts of America are. It was like going 
into the bottom of a canon below the Square. Being 
the noon hour, all the workers in the garment fac- 
tories along this stretch of Fifth Avenue were out 
on the sidewalk. Peanut looked at them for several 
blocks in silence. Then he exclaimed : 

Say, all those men and girls seem to be foreign, 


40 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

Jews or something. I haven’t seen an American 
face. Looks funny to me.” 

“ Nearly half the population of New York is for- 
eign,” said Mr. Rogers. “Most of these garment 
workers you see here live in the great East Side 
tenement district you’ve heard of. Over where they 
live New York looks like a foreign city.” 

Now they were south of Fourteenth Street, among 
houses once more. The cab turned up a side street 
and stopped before an old studio building. Mr. Rog- 
ers led the way in, and banged on a door. A mighty 
bass voice growled, “ Enter ! ” and they went in. 

The mighty owner of the mighty voice rose from 
before an easel on the far side of the big, cluttered 
up studio. He was more than six feet tall, with a 
big, bushy, black beard, and a tremendous pipe in 
his mouth. 

“ God bless my soul, old Rogers,” he cried, “ and 
the three musketeers ! ” 

He shook hands with each of the boys, so hard 
that it hurt. 

(“ Who were the three musketeers ? ” Peanut whis- 
pered to Rob. 

“ They were the three heroes in a book by Dumas 
— dandy book, too,” Rob whispered back. “ My, 
but that man’s got a grip ! ”) 


ALL ABOARD FOR THE SWAMP 41 

The boys changed into their scout clothes in the 
studio, while the cab waited, hung their regular 
suits in a corner and bade the huge artist good-bye. 

“ Farewell, Athos, Porthos and Aramis 1 ” he cried, 
waving a brush in the air. “ Depart and do doughty 
deeds in the dismal depths of darkest Virginia.” 

“ He’s a funny man,” said Peanut, outside. Does 
he always talk like that ? ” 

“ Usually more so,” Mr. Rogers laughed. 

The cab now took them quickly down toward the 
Hudson River, crossed West Street amid a bewilder- 
ing maze of loaded trucks, and stopped at the pier. 
They couldn’t see the river, but they saw the stacks 
of their steamer over the pier shed. Here they 
checked their trunks, got their stateroom keys, and 
led by Mr. Rogers crossed the street again, on foot, 
and walked rapidly back toward Broadway. 

The four of them in khaki attracted no little atten- 
tion. Passers on the sidewalk stopped to stare. A 
truck driver asked them if they were Roosevelt’s 
Rough Riders. “ That must be Teddy,” he laughed, 
pointing at Peanut. 

‘‘ Humph ! ” said Art, disgusted, “ you’d think 
they’d never seen a boy scout before ! ” 

“ Most of them never have, probably,” Mr. Rogers 
answered. 


42 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

It was now one o’clock. They stopped in a quick 
lunch restaurant for a bite to eat, and then started 
down Broadway. The buildings did not yet seem 
very high, but suddenly they came out into the open 
space by the City Hall, and all three boys gave a 
whistle of astonishment. Off to the left rose the 
enormous bulk of the Municipal Office Building, like 
a mighty cliff. Peanut stopped and began to count 
the stories, and seven people bumped into him, spoil- 
ing the count each time. He finally decided there 
were about forty, including the tower on top. South 
of this building was the World newspaper building, 
with its golden dome, and then the tall Tribune 
building, and then, below the square, a veritable 
forest of skyscrapers began. But the biggest wonder 
was on their side of the square, the great white tower 
of the Wool worth Building, at that time not quite 
completed, but rising up higher than any structure 
they had ever seen. 

“ It’s the tallest building in the world, except the 
Eifel Tower in Paris,” said the scout-master. “ The 
whole top, ten or twelve stories, will sometimes be 
under a cloud, like a mountain summit. You know 
that old quarry, boys, at the foot of Tom Ball Moun- 
tain up home ? Well, the stone that built this little 
old City Hall here in 1812 came from that quarry, 


ALL ABOARD FOR THE SWAMP 43 

and the quarry is no farther below the mountain sum- 
mit than the City Hall is now below the top of the 
Wool worth Tower.” 

They now walked on into the forest of skyscrapers 
to the south, the boys with their heads tipped back 
till their necks ached. They saw Wall Street and 
the Stock Exchange and old Trinity Church, whose 
spire, once the highest thing in the city, is now al- 
most hidden down amid the tall office buildings. 
Then they entered the Singer Building, took an ele- 
vator, and were shot up forty stories, and finally 
came out on a little balcony with a gale of wind 
blowing about them, just as it blows on a mountain 
top, and saw the whole city, and the harbor, and the 
great Hudson River, and Brooklyn, and part of New 
Jersey, spread like a raised map below them. They 
were almost 600 feet in the air. Peanut leaned over 
and looked dizzily down into Broadway, which was 
like a huge canon cut through great rock cliffs. 

“The folks down there look like a procession of 
black ants,” he said. 

Rob looked over to the tall Bankers’ Trust Build- 
ing close by, with its curious peaked top. “We beat 
the Egyptians,” he said. “ They built the pyramids, 
but we build a thirty story building, and then put a 
pyramid on top of that ! ” 


44 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

“ What gets me/’ said Art, “ is how just men, like 
us, can build anything so big.” 

“You ain’t a man,” said Peanut. “Wait till you 
get to Technology, and you’ll find out, won’t he, Mr. 
Rogers?” 

“ Sure he will,” the man answered. “ The reason 
man can do it, though, is because he has steel to work 
with now. These buildings look like stone, but they 
are really just steel frames, with the stone put on al- 
most like shingles. Now we must get back to the 
boat. Looks pretty stormy, too, out there to the 
east, and it’s clouding up. A sea turn is coming in. 
Hope you won’t be sick. Peanut.” 

“ Ho ! I won’t be sick I ” the boy boasted. “ You’ll 
see.” 


CHAPTER V 

Peanut's First Taste of the Ocean 
HEIR steamer sailed at 3 : 30. As they got 



out into midstream they could see the whole 
great pile of skyscrapers on the lower end of Manhat- 
tan Island, grouped like a mighty range of moun- 
tains. The sea turn had come in strong now, and 
the tops both of the Wool worth Tower, and of the 
Singer Tower where they had stood, were out of 
sight in the mists. 

“ It's like a dream I " cried Rob. “ My, I guess 
it's the biggest city in the world ! " 

“It's the tallest, anyway," the scout master replied. 

Soon they passed the Statue of Liberty, which 
looked rather short after the big buildings. In the 
Narrows they met an ocean liner coming in, with four 
huge smoke-stacks, and hundreds of people along 
her rail. 

“ She's as long as Main Street ! " said Peanut. 
“ She's not a boat ; she's a hotel." 

They quickly passed the forts, and the lower bay 
opened out. 

“ Now are we on the ocean?" the boys asked. 


45 


46 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

“ Not yet — not for an hour,” said Mr. Rogers. 
“ We’ve got to pass Sandy Hook yet.” 

They were in the bow, on the upper deck, with 
sweaters on, a cold east wind whistling about them. 
Just behind, they could hear the crack, crack of the 
wireless instruments. The air smelled very salt. 
Finally they saw a low sand-bar, with a few buildings 
on it, to the starboard. 

“That’s the Sandy Hook government proving 
station for the big guns,” Mr. Rogers pointed. 
“We’ll be in the ocean soon. Peanut.” 

Presently the ship began to turn. To the west 
were the Navesink Highlands ; to the east was noth- 
ing at all but water — gray, ugly looking water. 
The boat gave a gentle heave over to one side, then 
dipped gently forward, and then swung back again. 
Peanut caught his balance, and looked a little dis- 
tressed. But he laughed with the rest. Nothing 
happened again for two or three minutes. Then 
the boat gave another heave to starboard, not so 
gentle this time, dipped her bow, and slowly — very 
slowly — righted. 

Peanut grew a trifle pale. “ Say,” he remarked, 
“ my stomach went down somewhere into my boots 
that time.” 

“ I didn’t like that much myself,” said Rob. 


PEANUTS FIRST TASTE OF THE OCEAN 47 

Art and Mr. Rogers declared that it didn’t trouble 
them in the least. 

“Wonder when it’s going to do it again?” said 
Peanut. 

Art looked to port. “You’ll find out in about 
one minute,” he said, pointing to a large heave of 
water coming toward them. The wave marched up 
quickly, and they felt the boat lay over. She rolled 
a long way, dipped her bow into a splash of foam, 
and very slowly righted, swinging back a bit the 
other way. 

“If it does that again,” said Peanut, “I’ll get 
mad ! ” ^ 

“Getting sick?” laughed Art. 

“ No,” the other replied, “ but I just don’t like it.’’ 

But the boat evidently had no intention of stop- 
ping. She began to roll and pitch steadily, and 
Peanut and Rob sat very still and grew whiter and 
whiter. 

“ Say, Peanut’s turning green I ” cried Art. 

“I ain’t sick, I tell you I” cried Peanut. “I won^t 
be sick!” 

But he got up and started to walk toward the 
cabin. Art and the scout master went with the two 
sufferers. 

“ They’ll have to have the lower berths if they’re . 


48 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

going to be sick,” Mr. Rogers said. “You take 
Rob, Art, and I’ll take Peanut.” 

By the time he had undressed, Peanut was willing 
to admit anything. “Twenty-five cents’ worth of 
lunch gone ! ” he moaned, “ and I don’t feel any 
better!” 

“Shall we bring you some supper?” asked Art, 
who had put Rob to bed next door, and come in. 

“ If you do, I’ll throw it at your head,” Peanut 
groaned, as he lay on his back and grabbed the 
edge of the bunk every time the ship rolled. 

Mr. Rogers and Art ate supper in the dining 
saloon alone, and there weren’t many others at table, 
either. 

“ Why aren’t we sick ? ” asked Art. 

“ Nobody knows,” the man replied. “ Some peo- 
ple are, some aren’t. We can thank our stars we 
belong to the latter class.” 

It was a rough night, but both Rob and Peanut 
finally dozed off. Art and the scout master were out 
on deck early, and saw the mail tossed off to the 
Cape Charles light-ship. The storm had vanished. 
The sun was out, and soon they ran into the calmer 
water of the lower Chesapeake Bay. When the 
motion had ceased, they went below and waked the 
other two boys. 


PEANUT’S FIRST TASTE OF THE OCEAN 49 

“ Get up, Peanut,” cried Art, giving the sleeper 
a dig. 

Peanut opened his eyes. He waited for the boat 
to roll. It didn’t. “ Gee 1 ” he cried. ‘‘ She’s stopped ! 
I feel better.” 

He got up, still a little faint and dizzy, and they 
all had breakfast. Then they piled up on deck, and 
watched the ship dock at Old Point Comfort, close 
by Fortress Monroe. There was only a brief stop 
here, and then they moved out into the calm waters 
of Hampton Roads, which were very blue, with a 
low-lying green shore. The air was soft and warm 
and languid, and the boys threw their coats open. 

“ Here’s where the Monitor fought the Merrimac^'^ 
Mr. Rogers told them. “ The Merrimac came down 
the James River, that big opening in the shore you 
see there to the southwest, and attacked the Union 
fleet anchored here. Then the Monitor arrived and 
put her out of business.” 

The boat moved south into the Elizabeth River, 
and soon they saw fleets of little oyster boats and 
big schooners loading with coal, and then the city 
of Norfolk to the left, looking very small after New 
York, with only two skyscrapers and they not more 
than twelve stories high. 

As their ship warped into her dock Art spied a 


50 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

big sign on a building near the water, “American 
Peanut Company.” 

“ Hi ! ” he called, “ that’s where you belong. Pea- 
nut I” 

“ Didn’t know they knew me down here,” said the 
other boy. 

“ This is the country where peanuts come from,” 
Mr. Rogers laughed. “ There are great plantations 
of them. Maybe we’ll see some.” 

By eleven o’clock they were out on the dock, and 
saw to it that their luggage was carried to a near-by 
pier where a tiny, dirty little steamboat named the 
Nita was tied up. This was the craft which would 
take them up the Dismal Swamp canal. It didn’t 
sail till three, so they walked up into the city to buy 
their provisions and get lunch. 

The provisions consisted of bacon, flour, coffee, 
bread, potted meats, soup sticks, condensed milk, 
sugar, salt, eggs (carefully packed in a little crate) 
and sweet chocolate cakes for dessert. They also 
bought a couple of jugs of spring water, for the 
water in the Swamp is dark colored and bitter, it is 
said, from the juniper roots. 

They lunched at a restaurant, and Mr. Rogers 
bought a morning paper. 

“ Hello,” he said, scanning it, “ maybe we’ll have 


PEANUT’S FIRST TASTE OF THE OCEAN 51 


some excitement yet. You remember that story a 
week ago about some mountaineers in Western 
Virginia who shot up a court-room, killed the judge, 
and escaped? Well, it says here that two of them 
are believed to have gone into the Dismal Swamp 
and hidden. I don’t believe they have, myself. 
They’d go the other way, back into the mountains. 
But I suppose there’ll be sheriffs in the Swamp 
looking for them.” 

S’pose there’ll be any bloodhounds ? ” asked Pea- 
nut, hopefully. 

“’Course not,” said Art. “The hounds would 
have to be put on those men’s tracks before they’d 
do any good, and if the men escaped way up state 
a week ago, how could that be done?” 

“ I s’pose not,” sighed Peanut, “ but I’d like to see 
a bloodhound tracking somebody, just the same.” 

After lunch the party wandered around Norfolk 
for a while, and then went down to the dock, to 
make sure all their stuff was safely aboard the Nita. 


CHAPTER VI 

Up the Dismal Swamp Canal 


HEY found that all their goods were stowed on 



A the Nita!s deck, and that little craft finally 
got under way. She had a crew of negroes, and a 
white captain who steered her when he wasn’t col- 
lecting fares. There were not more than half a 
dozen other passengers. She soon drew alongside 
the Navy Yard at Portsmouth, and the boys saw 
three or four of the great, gray battle-ships, with 
their skeleton masts and their huge guns, moored in 
the slips. Then the river narrowed. They passed 
under a railroad bridge or two, and entered the 
Dismal Swamp canal. At the entrance the boat 
stopped. A little bridge had been lifted up, and a 
gangplank was thrown out from the Nita right to 
the dusty road. Down this road they saw a few 
little whitewashed houses, some dusty trees, and 
negro girls with bright-colored clothes — that was all 
the village of Deep Creek. A couple of passengers 
got off, and the Nita moved on into the locks. Here 
they had to wait till the gates were opened, the 


UP THE DISMAL SWAMP CANAL 53 

water foaming through and floating their boat up to 
the higher level. Now the boys could see the dark, 
mahogany color of the water, as it rushed into the 
lock. Sitting in the bow, they looked up the canal, 
a waterway fifty feet wide between high banks, till 
the two sides met in a point, like the two rails on a 
straight railroad bed. There were no houses in 
sight, no hills, nothing but the arrow-like line of the 
canal, and over the banks the tall tops of strange, 
long-needled Southern pines, or the brighter green 
of black gums and maples. 

Every two or three miles there would appear a 
break in the bank to the east, and the Nita would 
stop by it, and through the gap the boys could see 
negroes driving donkeys in little two wheeled carts. 
The donkeys had no reins, the negroes driving them 
by shouting. Between yells they would take off 
some freight from the Nita^ and then drive away 
with it. Some of the Swamp to the east of the canal 
has been reclaimed for farms, but there were no 
breaks in the canal banks to the west. 

Toward six o’clock, however, the Nita reached a 
point where the high banks of the canal, formed by 
throwing up the dirt from the bottom, had been re- 
moved, and for a square mile on both sides stretched 
a great farm, reclaimed from the Swamp by drains. 


54 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

with a little white house sitting by the edge of the 
water, and a dozen stables and negro cabins scattered 
here and there. An old negro servant shuffled from 
the house and caught a mail-bag tossed to him from 
the steamer. 

Looks like pictures of the old South, before the 
war ! ” said Rob. 

Another mile, and the steamer stopped at a land- 
ing where there was a house or two, and a big lumber 
shed. 

‘‘ Lynch’s landing, all out ! ” cried Mr. Rogers. 

The negro crew hove their two small trunks and 
their provisions ashore, and then the little steamer 
puffed on up the straight canal and left them on the 
bank. There was a road which came down to the 
landing from the east, from a large lumber camp. 
Young onions were growing in the fields. 

“ This doesn’t look very wild or very dismal,” said 
Peanut, disappointed. 

“ You wait,” Mr. Rogers smiled. He went over to 
the small house by the landing, and asked the man 
who came to the door if he could take the party in 
to the lake. 

“ Yass, sar,” the man drawled, slowly, “ I reckon I 
can.” 

“ He talks just like a nigger,” whispered Peanut, 


UP THE DISMAL SWAMP CANAL 55 

who was hearing the Southern accent for the first 
time. 

The man disappeared down the bank behind his 
house, and presently they heard the chug, chug of a 
motor boat. The three boys, two men, two trunks 
and pile of provisions pretty well loaded it down, but 
the owner reckoned as how she’d make it, “ yass, 
sar.” So ofi they started. They followed the Nita 
a quarter of a mile down the canal, then they turned 
suddenly at right angles, to the west, and entered a 
second canal, smaller than the first, with much lower 
banks, showing that it had not been dug so deep. 

“Now you are in the Dismal Swamp, boys,” said 
Mr. Rogers. 

The three scouts looked ahead. This canal was as 
straight as the first, but narrower, so that the great 
trees almost met overhead. The banks were a thick 
tangle of roots, tall cane almost like small bamboo, 
cat briers and blackberry vines now white with blos- 
som. The water was still and black, and held the 
trees reflected. Looking up the canal was almost 
like looking up a long pipe. The unbroken line of 
forest was very quiet. There was no sound but the 
chug, chug of the motor. A great turkey-buzzard 
was sailing in the air overhead without moving his 
wings, exactly like a monoplane, They kept on for 


56 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

a mile, two miles, three miles, and still no human 
habitation, no break in the forest wall, no sound save 
the twitter of birds and the chug, chug of the 
motor. 

After four miles an opening showed ahead, and the 
launch stopped at a rough pier. 

Water’s not deep enough ahead. You>all will 
have to tote yo’ stuff up the path to the Cap’n’s,” 
said the owner of the boat. 

They hauled their baggage up on the bank, paid 
the boatman, and watched his launch turn and van- 
ish down the canal again. Ahead of them, through 
the reeds on the bank, which were three times as tall 
as Peanut, half an inch thick, and grew as close as 
grass, they saw a path. 

“We’ll have to make a second trip for the trunks, 
boys,” said the scout master. “ Let’s start with the 
grub.” 

Loading their provisions on their backs, the four 
started up the path. After a few hundred yards a 
clearing opened ahead, and in the centre they saw a 
little house, a bit of garden, an old, gray canal lock, 
and beyond it the canal again, six feet higher in 
level. 

“ Old Cap’n Jack lives here,” said Mr. Rogers. 
“You see, this canal feeds the big one. They call it 


UP THE DISMAL SWAMP CANAL 57 

the feeder. When they want more water down in 
the main stream, the Cap’n opens the locks here, and 
lets some flow down.” 

“Where does it come from?” asked Rob. 

“ From Lake Drummond. This canal is really the 
outlet from the lake. The lake is only a quarter of 
a mile away now.” 

“ Hooray ! ” shouted Peanut. “ But have we got 
to lug this stuff on our backs that far ? ” 

The scout master looked at the sky, which was 
clouding rapidly, and also noted that the sun had 
set and darkness was fast coming on. 

“We stay right here to-night,” he said. 

The Cap^n^s dog had now scented their approach, 
and rushed out barking. Behind him came Cap’n 
Jack, hobbling on a cane, a strange figure in patched 
and faded clothes, with a fringe of white beard under 
his chin and a three day stubble of white beard all 
over his face, and tobacco juice in the corners of his 
mouth. 

“ How are you, Cap’n Jack ! ” called Mr. Rogers. 
“ Remember me ? I was down here two or three 
years ago. Can we camp in your clearing to- 
night?” 

“ Yass, sah,” said the Cap’n. “ Yass, sah, I reckon 
you-all can, an’ I reckon I remember you pus’nally 


58 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

mighty well, sah. You’re the feller that draws pic- 
tures, ain’t you ? ” 

“You got his number,” said Peanut. 

“ These yere your boys ? ” 

“No, I wouldn’t claim ’em,” laughed the scout 
master. “ They are boy scouts down from the North 
with me, to see the Swamp.” 

“ Yass, sah,” said the Cap’n. 

(“ Does everybody down here say ‘ yass, sah ’ all 
the time ? ” whispered Art. 

“ He looks just like a billy goat,” whispered 
Peanut.) 

“ We’ve got two trunks at the landing,” said Mr. 
Rogers ; “ can we have a boat to bring ’em up in ?” 

“ Yass, sah,” the Cap’n replied. 

While Peanut and Rob rowed down from the locks 
in an old flat-bottomed skiff to get the trunks. Art 
and the scout master looked about for a place to pitch 
camp. The Cap’n invited them into his house for 
the night, but Mr. Rogers politely declined, on 
the ground that it would make him too much 
trouble. 

(“ I’ve been in it,” he whispered to Art. “ It’s not 
so clean as we are used to up our way.”) 

Then the Cap’n suggested his house-boat. This 
was new, just built that winter. On a kind of raft 


UP THE DISMAL SWAMP CANAL 59 

he had erected a little shed with a stove and four 
bunks in it. He was going to rent it to hunting par- 
ties, to anchor up in the lake. As it had never yet 
been used, it was clean as new boards, and so Art 
and Mr. Rogers carried the provisions into the cabin. 
The boat was moored above the locks, close to the 
Cap’n’s house, and beside it were half a dozen row- 
boats and cypress log dugouts. The trunks were 
hoisted over the lock, and taken aboard, too, a fire 
made in the stove, and soon supper was cooking. 

It was now quite dark. The boys wanted to get 
into a rowboat at once after supper and paddle up 
to the lake, but Mr. Rogers restrained them. 

“ You can^t see anything now,” he said, “ and, any- 
way, you couldn’t find the entrance to get back 
again.” 

“ Aw, of course we could find the way back ! ” 
said Peanut. 

“ All right, you wait and see. I’ll bet you’ll hunt 
for it half an hour in broad daylight.” 

“ Yass, sah,” said the Cap’n on the bank, “ that's 
right. They used to be a white flag markin’ it, but 
it blew down las' winter.” 

“ Say, Cap'n,” said the scout master, “ we read in 
the Norfolk paper to-day that two of those Beasley 
brothers who shot up the court-house up state last 


6o BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


week are supposed to be hiding in the Swamp. 
Seen anything of ’em ? ” 

‘‘No, sah, an’ I don’ reckon I want to. Good 
shots, them fellers. If I saw ’em I’d take mighty 
good care they didn’t see me, yass, sah.” 

“ Do you believe they are in the Swamp ? ” asked 
Art. 

“ No, sah, if you ask me, I don’. They know their 
way ’round the mountains, but nobody knows the 
Swamp ’cept swampers. They wouldn’t come yere, 
I don’ reckon. They ain’t many folks tries to hide 
in yere these days, not sence befo’ the war. I was a 
boy up to Deep Creek befo’ the war, yass, sah, an’ I 
can remember my daddy goin’ out into the Swamp 
at night with a basket, an’ carryin’ food to some 
place whar the nigger slaves come an’ got it. My 
daddy was a Union sympathizer, he was. I wanted 
to go fight with the Johnny rebs, but he wouldn’t 
let me, no, sah. I reckon the Swamp was full o’ 
nigger slaves hidin’ away, in them days.” 

“ What would you do if the Beasleys came here ? ” 
asked Art. 

“ I reckon I’d give ’em what they-all asked for,” 
the Cap’n replied. “ Yass, sah, and my rheumatics 
into the bargain.” 

He got up stiffly with a groan, and hobbled to his 


UP THE DISMAL SWAMP CANAL 6i 


house. The three boys and Mr. Rogers got their 
bunks ready, inspected their baggage by the light 
of the little camp lantern, put out the fire in the 
stove, and likewise turned in, to be ready for an early 
start in the morning. 


CHAPTER VII 


A Mystery in the Night 

I T was some time after midnight when Rob, who 
was the lightest sleeper of the four, suddenly woke 
up with a start — he could not tell why. He just 
woke up with an overpowering feeling that some- 
thing was happening. He raised his head and lis- 
tened, looking through the open door of the little 
cabin. At first he could see nothing, for the night 
was very dark, nor hear anything, either, except a 
soft rushing of the night wind through the tree tops. 
Then he was aware of footsteps outside. They 
seemed to be going toward the house. He heard a 
muttered whisper or two a second later. Slipping 
from his berth, he quickly roused the other sleepers, 
putting his fingers over their lips to prevent them 
from speaking as they awoke. But Peanut, only 
half awake, cried out, ‘‘ Wha’s ’er matter ? ” before he 
could be silenced. The house-boat was moored not 
more than fifty feet from Cap’n Jack’s cabin, and this 

cry must have been heard by any one prowling there. 
62 


A MYSTERY IN THE NIGHT 


63 


Scarcely had Mr. Rogers pulled his automatic from 
its holster and Art slipped a cartridge into his rifle 
when they heard the crunch of steps coming down 
the bank toward them. 

“ Who's there, and what do you want ? " cried the 
scout master sharply, pushing the boys back from 
the doorway. 

There was no reply whatever. 

“ That's strange," he muttered. 

Peanut, meanwhile, had slipped through the win- 
dow at the back of the boat, and was peeping around 
the rear end. By crouching low, he could get any 
figures on the bank outlined against a bit of sky, 
and he came crawling back with the whispered in- 
formation that there were two of them there, a man 
and a woman. 

“ A woman ! " whispered Mr. Rogers. “ That's 
stranger still." 

“ Suppose it's the Beasleys ? " asked Art. 

“ The57’ wouldn't have a woman along," answered 
the scout master. 

“ Are you going to answer me or not ? " he called 
out again, in a loud voice. ‘‘ There are four of us 
here, and we've got a bead on you against the sky. 
You'd better speak up, or take your chances 1 " 

There was no reply, but they heard steps, and 


64 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

Peanut, again sneaking through the window, re- 
ported that he could dimly see the two figures 
retreating toward the house. 

The four now stepped out on the little deck of the 
boat. At that moment they caught the flare of a 
match in the Cap’n’s window, and a lamp was 
lighted. Then they heard the Cap’n’s voice. 

“ Who are you-all and what you want yere ? ” he 
was asking, apparently from his doorway. 

There was no reply. Again came the Cap’n’s 
voice, high and angry. “ Don’ you point no guns 
at me, no, sah ; I got a gun here, too, an’ they’s nine 
lead pills in it.” 

Still there was no reply. 

“ We can’t let ’em kill the Cap’n,” whispered Art, 
starting to spring up the bank. 

Mr. Rogers pulled him back. ‘‘They won’t kill 
the Cap’n,” he said. “ There are more than two of 
’em; I just saw three cross the light. It must be a 
sheriff’s posse looking for the Beasleys — but I can’t 
dope out the woman.” 

The Cap’n’s voice again came sharply through 
the dark. “ I don’ know who you-all are,” he said, 
“but I know you’re mighty ungentlemanly not to 
answer when you’re spoke to. I’m ol’ Cap’n Jack, 
an’ this is my house, an’ everybody knows it, an’ if 


A MYSTERY IN THE NIGHT 65 

you'll tell me what you-all want I’ll do my best for 
you, yass, sah.” 

“ Cap’n,” suddenly called Mr. Rogers, “ you shut 
your door and go inside. If they try to molest you, 
fire, and we’ll make it hot for ’em ! ” 

“ Yass, sah,” called back the Cap’n, but they are 
no gentlemen, sah, hot to answer a civil question.” 

‘‘ One of ’em’s a lady I ” shouted Peanut. 

Silence I ” said the scout master. 

“ I ain’t got nothin’ to say against the ladies, 
sah,” called back the Cap’n, “ but they’s no gentle- 
men, no, sah.” 

The boys heard his door slam shut, and then they 
heard footsteps retreating. Peanut, crawling along 
the deck on hands and knees, reported that one fig- 
ure was now posted on the lock. Listening tensely 
in the silence, they could hear whispers, as if this 
figure were talking to somebody else near by. 

They did not sleep much again that night, though 
they took turns in dozing off, at least one always 
standing guard with the gun. With the first gray 
hint of dawn they put their heads out of the cabin 
and peered around the clearing. 

The figure of a man was still standing on the 
bridge gate across the locks. No one else was at 
first visible, but as the sun began to redden the east 


66 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


and the light increased, they could make out the 
figures of two more men across the Cap’n’s little 
garden, at the edge of the woods, and a third man 
at the edge of the woods between the house and the 
lake. 

Peanut walked boldly up upon the bank, and 
looked around. Then he strolled down the clear- 
ing, Art and the rest closely following him. All 
four men watched them sharply, but said nothing. 
The boys could now see the canal below the locks. 
Two light-draft motor boats were there, and in one 
of them sat two women — or what appeared to be 
two women. As they looked up, Peanut gave a 
shrill laugh, for they were plainly men dressed up. 
But they, like the rest, said nothing, even though 
Peanut cried derisively at them, “ Good-morning, 
girls ! ” 

“ This certainly is weird,” said Rob, as they went 
back to the Cap’n’s house. 

Old Cap’n Jack was now out in his dooryard. 
He looked about the clearing at his garden, and 
then counted his chickens. 

“ They ain’t taken nothin’,” he said ‘‘ Must be 
sheriffs after them two Beasleys. I don’ counte- 
nance no murder, no, sah, but I hope the Beasleys 
gets away frorn that yer^ crowd, They’s no gentle^ 


A MYSTERY IN THE NIGHT 


67 


men — cornin’ to a man’s house at night an’ wakin’ 
him up at the point o’ six guns, an’ never sayin’ a 
word to explain.” 

” Do you suppose they think you have the Beas- 
leys in your house?” asked the scout master. 

” Say 1 ” called the Cap’n, ‘‘ you-all listen I If you’s 
lookin’ for the Beasleys, jes’ walk right in my house, 
an’ look everywhar you like, from top to bottom, an’ 
in the teapot.” 

None of the men spoke or moved. 

The Cap’n scowled, and, picking up a pail, started 
for the woods, where he had dug a spring hole to 
get water a little clearer than that in the canal. 
One of the men moved across his path and blocked 
his way with a six shooter. 

“Ain’t you goin’ to let me get no water, sah?” 
demanded the Cap’n. 

The man said nothing, but kept the gun on him. 

“ Let the other man get it, then,” suggested the 
scout master. 

The second man took the pail in silence, disap- 
peared up the path into the deep woods, and presently 
came back with the pail full of the yellow swamp 
water. (The water is mahogany color in bulk, but 
yellow when seen in a pail or glass.) He set it down 
at the edge of the clearing, and resumed his post. 


68 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


“Wall, you’re half a gentleman, sah,” said the 
Cap’n. 

The boys went back and cooked a hasty break- 
fast, talking excitedly of the strange adventure. 
The four guards still watched the clearing, practi- 
cally surrounding the house. Breakfast over, the 
boys bargained with the Cap’n for a boat for the 
week, selecting finally a nineteen-foot-long dugout 
canoe, which had short oars on outriggers as well as 
paddles. 

This canoe was made of a single great cypress 
log, hollowed out and pointed at the two ends. 
Cypress wood never rots, and the Cap’n assured 
them the boat was twenty-seven years old. He 
painted it once a year, and that was all. It was 
dry as a bone inside, there being no seams whatever 
in it to leak. Loading their luggage aboard, the 
party took their seats, pushed off, and started on up 
the canal, under a warm spring sun, for last night’s 
clouds had blown away. The Cap’n sang out good- 
bye from the bank. 

They had taken about four strokes, when the man 
guarding the clearing on that side stepped down to 
the edge of the canal and silently leveled a revolver 
on them. 

The two paddles and the oars stopped abruptly. 


A MYSTERY IN THE NIGHT 


69 


and Peanut gave a gasp, half of surprise, half of 
instinctive recoil from the little black hole of the gun 
barrel, pointed, it seemed to him, directly at his face. 

Mr. Rogers was getting a little tempery by this 
time. 

“You put up that gun, and be quick about it I “ 
he cried in a voice that the man obeyed. The gun 
dropped to his side. 

“ Now,” continued Mr. Rogers, “ I am a citizen of 
the state of Massachusetts and these three boys are 
in my company. You know perfectly well, if. you 
are looking for the Beasleys, that we are not the 
Beasleys, and have no connection with them. Before 
this goes any farther, I demand to see your badge.” 

The man, who was a tall, lank individual with a 
three days^ growth of beard on his face, opened his 
coat and showed a nickel shield. But he did not 
speak. 

Mr. Rogers sent the boat in close, and inspected 
the badge. 

“ Very well, now we’ll talk business.” He pulled 
several envelopes and his pocketbook from his 
pocket and handed them up, “ That’s who I am,” 
he said. “ I came down here with these boy scouts 
on a camping trip and we propose to have that 
trip. If you don’t let us pass, and pass immedi- 


70 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

ately, there’s some trouble waiting for you when I 
get back to Washington I ” 

The man looked over the envelopes carefully, took 
out a letter and glanced at it, and handed them all 
back. He said nothing, but jerked his thumb up- 
stream. 

“Well, you’d better!” muttered Peanut. 

“ Keep still,” said Art, and the boat shot ahead. 

“ What I can’t understand,” said Rob, “ is why, if 
they are after the Beasleys, they don’t go into the 
house and search.” 

“ That’s easy,” the scout master replied. “ They’re 
afraid. The Beasleys are desperate men, and if 
they were inside they’d shoot the first sheriff who 
entered.” 

“ Cowards 1 ” sniffed Peanut. “ But why couldn’t 
they pop ’em from the window anyhow?” 

“ Could if they were in there,” said Art. “ They’re 
the punkest lot of sheriffs I ever saw.” 

“ I suppose two of ’em dressed up as women so 
folks would think they were a picnic party, or some- 
thing like that? ” suggested Rob. 

“ Probably,” Mr. Rogers answered. “ We’ll have 
to go back this afternoon and see if the Cap’n’s all 
right. Now, boys, forget the sheriffs. We are about 
to see the Lake of the Dismal Swamp 1 ” 


CHAPTER VIII 


The Lake of the Dismal Swamp 

I T was indeed apparent that they were coming to 
open water. In a moment or two the boat slipped 
out of the shadow of the forest, and the Lake of the 
Dismal Swamp lay before their astonished eyes. 

It was like nothing the boys had ever seen. There 
were, perhaps, fifty or a hundred feet of muddy shore 
between the forest and open water, and this shore 
was covered thick with what looked exactly like 
great, gray mastodons’ bones and tusks, piled every 
which way. The canal cut a black path through 
the beach to the lake, and out at the end of the 
beach, like strange lighthouses marking the entrance, 
stood two ancient bald cypress trees, rising from the 
dark water on a tent of roots, tapering quickly, and 
bearing at their tops a few shreds of foliage. They, 
too, were gray, and seemed almost dead. 

The lake itself appeared very wide. The farther 
shore could be dimly seen, consisting, apparently, of 
a Jong; level line of hills. Really the Jake is ppt 

n 


72 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

more than three miles and a half across, and these 
“ hills ” are the tops of the forest trees. 

“What are all those big gray things on the 
beach ? ” asked Rob. 

“ Say, there’s a track in the mud 1 ” cried Art. 

“ Ho, ’course I could find this entrance,” said Pea- 
nut. “ You just come in between those two cypress 
trees.” 

Mr. Rogers answered the last remark first. 

“ Is that so, smarty ? ” he said. “ We’ll see. Sup- 
pose you look along the shore to left and right.” 

Peanut looked. The boat was now out on the 
open water, and he could get a clear glimpse of all 
the shore. As far as he could see in either direction 
stood ancient cypress trees in the water, exactly like 
the two at the mouth of the canal. 

He sucked in his breath with a little whistle, but 
said nothing. 

“We’ll go tracking later, Art,” the scout master 
now said. “ This shore is a grand place for tracks. 
Those gray bones all over the shore, Rob, are the 
roots and knees of dead cypress trees, bleeched and 
worn smooth by the sun and waves. Cypress wood 
never rots, they say. Some of the cypresses on this 
shore were cut down before the Revolutionary War, 
and the roots and stumps are still here. The pieces 


THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP 73 

you see sticking up like big elephants’ tusks are the 
knees, as they are called. A cypress root will run 
five or six feet from the trunk, and then it will put 
up a big shoot right through the earth and the water, 
till the pointed end comes above the high water 
level about six or eight inches. Then it stops grow- 
ing. Apparently this is to get air for the roots, and 
enables the trees to grow in water. Of course, these 
knees have no branches nor foliage, and when they’ve 
been broken off and washed up to the ground they 
look exactly like tusks.” 

** The whole shore looks like an elephants’ grave- 
yard,” said Art. 

They paddled the canoe alongshore for a way, and 
found huge cypress trees growing four hundred feet 
from the beach, one of them with such a wide space 
under the roots that they pushed the bow of the boat 
right under the tree. 

“ You could sit under here and fish in the rain,” 
said Art. 

Rob took several pictures of the cypresses, and 
then they sent the dugout into mid-lake and made 
for the farther side. A mile out, and the entire shore 
faded to a frail green mist of level forest. In the 
centre they could see that Lake Drummond is almost 
a circular bowl in the heart of the Swamp. All the 


74 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

shores looked far away. There were no other boats, 
no sign of houses, no sound but the lap of the little 
waves. Far above them two turkey-buzzards were 
slowly sailing in great circles. 

“ Gee, I feel a long way from home ! ” said Peanut, 
suddenly, ceasing to paddle and gazing out across 
the dark, mahogany-colored water. 

“ It isn’t dismal, though, it’s just lonely,” said 
Rob. 

“ Head her northwest, Art,” said the scout master. 
“ We must get ashore and make camp. Head her 
toward that little dip in the forest sky-line.” 

Presently they drew near the shore on the far side. 
There were no cypresses in the water here at all. 
The land seemed elevated two or three feet above the 
water-line, and there were many pines. Coming 
closer, the boys were surprised to see, also, four or 
five board huts half hidden in the trees. 

“ Do people live here ? ” they asked. 

“No,” Mr. Rogers said, “but here’s where the 
Washington Ditch comes in from Suffolk, and hunt- 
ers have built these shacks to stay in during the 
fall hunting season.” 

‘ Why couldn’t we stay in one now?” said Pea- 
nut. 

“ They are probably locked,” said Rob. 


THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP 75 

“And more than probably dirty,” laughed the 
scout master. 

They now ran the boat ashore on a little strip of 
sand. Art noted this. “ Look,” he cried, “ sand I ” 

“ A good deal of the lake bed is clear ocean sand,” 
Mr. Rogers said. “ You see, this whole Swamp was 
once ocean bottom. We’ll have to have a geology 
lesson to-night.” 

“ Say, let’s go swimming before we make camp. 
I’m hot,” cried Peanut. 

“In that water?” said Rob. 

“ Sure, it’s good water. I’ve drunk some of it. 
We’ll have to drink it soon ; ours is ’most given out. 
Come on in ! ” 

“ I suppose you don’t mind whether you get bit- 
ten by a water moccasin or not ? ” the scout master 
asked. 

“A what?” 

“ A water moccasin, a snake, you know — nice 
poisonous one, too I ” 

Peanut hastily drew back from the edge. “ Good- 
night ! ” he said. 

“ I haven’t seen a snake,” Art put in. “ I thought 
there were lots of them in the Swamp.” 

“Well, how could you see through that water?” 
said Rob. “ Would they bite you, Mr. Rogers ? ” 


76 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

“ They’d probably get out of your way,” the man 
replied. “ But I wouldn’t take any chances. Better 
just stand in shoal water by the shore and splash 
yourselves, if you want to. But let’s pick out a 
camp site first.” 

The three boys scattered alongshore and plunged 
into the thicket which came almost to the water’s 
edge. Mr. Rogers, who had camped here before, 
had his own ideas, and walked east a few hundred 
feet toward a pair of great gum trees which grew in 
a few steps from the shore. Between them and the 
six or eight feet of beach — a beach covered with tall 
grass — was a solid wall of cane-brake, eight feet 
high, like a forest of small fish poles. Parting these 
reeds with his hands, he pressed himself through 
carefully and closed the stalks behind him. A few 
feet of this work, and he stood in a small clearing 
between the giant gum trees. The ground was 
dampish and matted with grass and briers and 
underbrush, but there were no trees to interfere. 
Behind this clearing was the wall of the Swamp 
jungle. A tent pitched here would be quite invis- 
ible from the lake. He put his fingers to his lips 
and blew three short, sharp blasts. 

In a moment he heard the boys running in his 
direction. They dashed right past the spot. When 


THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP 77 

they were well by, he blew again. They came 
dashing back, and he heard Art say, ‘‘ Look for his 
tracks, you poor idiots ! ” 

There was a moment of silence, then a cry from 
Art — “ Here, the grass is broken down, and here’s a 
broken reed ! ” Then the reeds swayed, and the 
three astonished and panting boys almost tumbled 
into the clearing. 

“ Right on the job, eh. Art?” Mr. Rogers laughed. 
“ Have you found anything better than this, boys?” 

“ We didn’t find anything much good,” they said. 
“All the shore is just alike, and there isn’t a stone 
anywhere for an oven.” 

“I like this!” cried Peanut. “You could hide 
here, all right. My, it’s something like ‘ Dred ’ 1 ” 

“ Well, that’s what we want,” the scout master 
said, “ because if folks come in here fishing or hunt- 
ing, it’s better not to run any more risks than 
possible of having our stuff swiped. Let’s get 
busy and clear the ground. You and Art do that. 
Peanut, while Rob and I go up to the end of the 
Washington Ditch and get some boards from an 
old, tumble-down shack there, to make bunks with. 
Don’t go out through the reeds, or we’ll break ’em 
down too much. Go to one side a way, and then 
come out on shore.” ^ 


78 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

Peanut and Art began to hack with their knives 
and hatchets, while the scout master led Rob back 
up the shore, past the boat a short way, to a point 
where a brook seemed to be flowing into the lake. 
They walked up a path beside this brook for two 
hundred feet and came upon a half tumbled-down 
shanty, and beside it the end of a small canal held 
in by a mossy old dam gate. Under this gate the 
water trickled which made the brook. 

That’s the Washington Ditch,” Mr. Rogers said. 
“ It was planned and surveyed by George Washing- 
ton himself, not long after the Revolution. It runs 
from the lake here way back to the highland south 
of Suffolk-five miles. They hoped when they built 
it that it would drain the west side of the Swamp 
down into the lake here, and make the rich Swamp 
land into farms. But the - Swamp is far too flat to 
drain by any such small methods. That other ditch 
turning off just up there is the Jericho Ditch. It 
runs eleven miles almost to Suffolk, but it’s all 
clogged up now. Both the ditches were used for 
many years, however, as a means of hauling out 
lumber. N obody uses the J ericho Ditch now, though, 
and only hunters use the Washington Ditch.” 

“ And what was this old shack for ? ” 

“ This was the hotel,” Mr. Rogers laughed. “ You 


THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP 79 

could spend the night in it for a quarter, during the 
hunting season.” 

He and Rob selected some short boards which had 
fallen away from the sides, and lugged them back to 
the camp. Art and Peanut had already cleared the 
underbrush away, brought down the boat, and 
were unpacking the baggage. They took the long 
piece of rope brought from Southmead and stretched 
it between two small trees ; then they slung the two 
tents side by side over it, and pegged them down. 
Meanwhile Rob and Mr. Rogers cut up a small tree 
into four four-foot lengths, and on these rollers they 
laid the boards they had brought, under the tents, 
making a bed in each, raised up two or three inches 
from the damp ground. 

“ There are your bed springs ! ” laughed Rob. “ A 
little hard, but a lot of juniper boughs will fix that.” 

The trunks were placed behind the tents, and the 
provisions on a shelf made by placing a few sticks 
across the forked branches of a young tree close by, 
thus getting them up out of the reach of insects, 
muskrats, and the like. 

‘‘Now,” said Art, scratching his head, “what 
stumps me is how we are going to make a good fire 
pit, without any stones.” 

“ I guess we’ll just have to use three green logs, 


8o BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


in a square with an open end, and when they get 
burned put down three more,” Rob suggested. 

“ Take this tree,” Peanut remarked, tapping one 
of the tall gum trees, which was at least three feet in 
diameter. 

“You’re a great help, Peanut,” Rob retorted. 
“ Come, get busy and cut two forks and a cross-bar 
to hang the kettle on while Art and I prospect for 
fuel.” 

“Fuel is easy,” said the scout master. “Just go 
out on shore and chop up the cypress roots and 
stumps.” 

“ But aren’t they punky and rotten ? They’re so 
old.” 

“ You try it,” the man replied. 

The two boys went, and presently returned with 
their arms full of the gray wood, wood the color out- 
side of the shingles on an old house, but still red at 
the heart, though some of it must have been dead a 
hundred and fifty years. 

It was a harder matter finding three green logs for 
the sides of the fire pit, and all the party scattered 
into the Swamp behind to search. After they had 
taken a half dozen strides they began to lose sight 
of each other, and in a moment each one found him- 
self completely alone. The ground was dry enough, 


THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP 8i 


but the trees were thick, and great rattan vines grew 
up them and pendent mosses swung down from their 
branches, and there were patches of tall cane-brake 
and a perfect jungle of briers and jasmine plants. 
Art soon found a tree recently fallen which was 
about six inches through, and he began to chop it up 
into four two-foot lengths, which were all he could 
get out of it. The three cuts necessary took him 
some time, and when he had done he could carry 
only two of the pieces, they were so heavy. He 
started back for camp, guided chiefly by the open 
light over the lake, and suddenly came out on shore 
two hundred feet below the boat. 

“That’s funny,” he thought to himself. “I could 
have sworn I came back exactly as I went.” 

The others had had no success, so Art started back 
for his other two pieces. This time he took good 
care to try to mark his direction by definite trees. 
He hunted fifteen minutes without being able to find 
the tree he had cut, however, and had to return with 
a piece cut from another tree. 

“That’s some swamp in there,” he said. “I 
couldn’t find the first tree at all — couldn’t even find 
my own tracks.” 

“ Now you see,” said Mr. Rogers gravely, “ why 
we’ll stick mostly to the boat, and never go any- 


82 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


where without a compass. You boys had better 
study the map very carefully to-day, too, and be 
sure of your directions.” 

It was now past noon, and the fire was lighted 
and dinner set to cooking. The day had been warm 
and the boys consequently thirsty, so that the spring 
water supply which they had brought in was used 
up. Art took a kettle and filled it from the lake. 

“ Fm not very strong for this stuff,” he said. 

“Try it, it’s pure and good,” Mr. Rogers told 
him. “ In the old days they used to stock up the 
ships with it before sailing from Norfolk, because it 
keeps fresh so long. Even in stagnant pools it never 
seems to grow foul and smell. They say, too, it has 
strong antiseptic qualities. I suppose that’s why it 
doesn’t get stagnant.” 

Art took a sip. “It’s not bad, is it?” he said. 
“ Kind of bitter, that’s all.” 

Boiled into soup or coffee, however, the taste 
disappeared. The four campers, round their little 
fire behind the screen of cane-brakes, made a 
hearty meal. After the dishes were washed and 
camp made ship-shape, and every speck of waste 
burned up to prevent flies. Art insisted on going 
tracking. They walked by the edge of the water 
for a half mile ov md came to the spot where the 


THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP 83 

cypresses began to grow out into the water. From 
here on the shore, between water-line and forest, was 
mostly black mud, interlaced with thousands of dead 
cypress roots, and of course this black mud held 
every footprint. The scouts moved along with their 
eyes to the ground, finding something at almost 
every step. 

“ *Coons I cried Art. “ My goodness, nothing but 
^coons 1 Looks as if a tiny, shriveled-up baby had 
been walking all over the place.” 

“ Here's a deer,” shouted Peanut. 

The others pressed around. Sure enough, com- 
ing out of the woods and crossing to the water was 
the track, the small, sharp, cloven hoof-prints cut 
deep into the black soil. 

“ Come down to drink, I s' pose,” said Art. Look, 
here's tracks I don't know — wow, lots of 'em, making 
little paths to the water ! ” 

“ Looks like a muskrat to me,” said Peanut. 

“ Muskrat your grandmother,” Art retorted scorn- 
fully. ‘‘ A muskrat is more web-footed, and doesn’t 
sink his toes in this way. They lie flat on the 
ground.” 

“ It looks to me like a 'possum track,” the scout 
master suggested. Here's another that looks like 
a mink.” 


84 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

“ Gee whiz, what a place to trap ! '' cried Art. 

The tracks of the small animals and of an occasional 
deer continued abundant, but presently they came 
upon something quite different. It was a huge track 
as big as a saucer, with a heel to it, and sunk down 
an inch or more into the soft soil. 

“ A bear ! ” cried Art. 

“ I guess you’re right, ’ said Mr. Rogers ; “ noth- 
ing else would be heavy enough to go so deep.” 

Searching closely, they found more paw prints, 
showing that he had come out of the woods and 
walked to the water and back. 

Art took his hatchet and cut a small tree from 
the woods close by, sticking it into a stump at the 
water’s edge. 

“ Now I can find this spot again,” he said. “ I’ll 
be down here before you folks are up to-morrow, 
and get you a bear steak.” 

“Yes you will ! ” said Peanut. 

“You wait,” the other retorted 

They now went back to the boat and launched it 
once more, rowing around the western shore of the 
lake. Peanut had the steering paddle in the stern, 
the scout master rowed, and Rob paddled at the 
bow. Art sat on a box between Peanut and Mr. 
Rogers, his rifle on his knees, watching the wall of 


THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP 85 

the forest. But nothing appeared except an occa- 
sional turkey-buzzard flying in great, lazy circles 
overhead. He gave up watching presently, and 
jointed his fish rod, using bugs for bait. Putting 
the boat in among the cypress stumps near shore, 
the rowers stopped and let Art make casts for fifteen 
minutes. Suddenly there was a rise, the boat spun 
half-way 'round, and a big black bass came flopping 
into the dugout. A few moments later Art got a 
second one. 

“ That’ll do for supper,” said Rob. “ Don't you 
think we’d better be going to see how the Cap’n’s 
getting along before it gets any later ? ” 

“ Golly, I'd plumb forgotten the poor old Cap'n,” 
said Peanut. “Wonder if the sheriffs have gone 
yet ? Poor cowards ! Come on.” 

The boat moved swiftly out into the very centre 
of Lake Drummond, where Art, making a sounding 
with his rod, found to his surprise that the water 
was not over eight feet deep. The ring of forest all 
about was misty and far away. 

“ Now,” said Mr. Rogers, “ we'll give smarty Pea- 
nut a chance to show that he can find the entrance 
to the feeder. Steer her. Peanut.” 

Peanut looked at the shore, which was without a 
break or landmark. Then he looked at the sun. 


86 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


“Well,” he laughed, “it’s somewhere on that side, 
to the east. Let her rip.” 

As they drew within a quarter mile of the eastern 
shore, the long line of bald cypresses stretched plainly 
in front of them, but still there was no break in the 
forest wall, and any two of the cypresses looked ex- 
actly like the two guarding the entrance to the feeder. 
Peanut was plainly perplexed. Finally he steered 
toward the south and ran the boat half a mile down 
the shore, but still no entrance appeared. Then he 
came close in and ran her back again. Art was 
keeping tabs with a watch. 

“It’s been half an hour since we first got inshore,” 
he taunted. 

Peanut kept on northward, and suddenly, right 
under the bow, was the black lane of water between 
the cypresses into the feeder. Looking up, the boys 
saw that the forest wall closed in so over the canal 
that it made no perceptible break, even at this near 
point. 

“ How would you find the entrance ? ” Peanut de- 
manded of Mr. Rogers. “ I’m stumped — ^I admit 
it.” 

“ I’d find it by that tree,” the scout master an- 
swered, pointing to the top of a tall maple which 
stood up a few feet higher than the other trees at the 


THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP 87 

canal mouth, and had a peculiar, flat top. “You 
can see it from all over the lake, when you once 
know it.” 

“ I think we ought to mark this place better,” sug- 
gested Rob. “We ought to put some sign on one 
of these two cypresses.” 

“ Right, O ! ” said Peanut, sending the boat in 
against the roots of the larger one. 

Rob took a big handkerchief from his pocket. 
“ Here, Fll give this to the cause,” he said. 

Art then took his hatchet, scrambled from the boat 
to the roots of the tree, and tried to chop a slit which 
would hold one end of the handkerchief firm. But 
after Art had nearly fallen off into the water, Rob 
suggested that they get a larger piece of cloth from 
the Cap’n, fasten it on a board, and nail the board 
to the tree. 

“ Nails I ” cried Art, climbing back into the boat. 
“ That makes me think, I want a lot of nails.” 

“ What for ? ” Peanut asked. 

“ Never you mind,” said Art. “ I want ’em. 
You’ll see.” 

They ran quickly up the feeder, and found the 
Cap'n all alone again. 

“ Them fellers went away ’bout an hour ago,” he 
3aid^ “ an’ they never 3 aid good-bye, nor anythin’ 


88 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


else. Never made a peep all day. Jes’ sat an’ sat 
an’ watched my house.” 

** Didn’t they try to look inside at all ? ” asked 
Rob. 

**No, sah ; I reckon they was too powerful scared 
that the Beasleys might be in thar,” the Cap’n 
laughed. “ But they give up waitin’ finally, an’ went 
back down the feeder. I don’ countenance no mur- 
der, no, sah, but I sho’ hopes them fellers don’ ketch 
the Beasleys an’ get the reward money. They’re no 
gentlemen, no, sah. Come to a feller’s house an’ 
never speak to him ! Bah ! ” 

“ It was a funny proceeding, and no mistake,” 
said Mr. Rogers. 

Art now asked for nails, and a piece of old cloth, 
and the loan of a saw. Cap’n Jack didn’t want to 
take any pay for the nails, but Art insisted, because 
he filled one pocket as full as he could get it. 

“ How many signs are you-all goin’ to tack up ? ” 
asked the Cap’n. 

“These aren’t for the signs,” said Art. “Some- 
thing else.” 

Back at the entrance to the feeder, the scouts 
nailed the old piece of white cloth provided by the 
Cap’n to a couple of strips of board, and Mr. Rogers, 
being the tallest, nailed the boards as high as he 


THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP 89 

could reach up the trunk of a cypress, facing the 
lake. 

As they rowed away, this patch of cloth showed 
plainly for half a mile. 

Art looked up at the square-topped maple. “Now 
you can steer by the maple from the other side,'^ he 
said, “and when you get near, you can just head 
straight for the white bull’s-eye.” 

“ We ought to have put our names or something 
on it,” said Peanut. 

“ Why didn’t you think of it before ? ” demanded 
Rob. 

“ Why didn’t you ? ” came the answer. 

“ Well, let’s go back,” said Art. 

Back they went, and again Mr. Rogers climbed 
up with a pencil and printed on the cloth, 

SOUTHMEAD BOY SCOUTS, TROOP I 
and then the date. 

“ Three cheers 1 ” yelled Peanut, leading them off. 

It was sunset as the dugout grounded on the shore 
in front of camp, the sun going down a big red ball 
behind the dark forest and lighting up all the west- 
ern clouds to rosy glory. Peanut watched it, as he 
rubbed his tired arms — for they had paddled almost 
fifteen miles that day — and said nothing. 


90 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


“ What^s on your mind beside your hair, Peanut ? ” 
asked Rob. 

“Not much,” the boy replied, “^cept I was think- 
ing how lonely it is here on this lake, and how the 
fellers at home have all got to study this evening.” 

“ So have you,” Mr. Rogers laughed, “ after you've 
got some fresh wood, and had supper. WeVe got 
to have a lesson in geology to-night.” 

Peanut, with a grin, took his hatchet from his belt, 
and began to assault a cypress stump. 


CHAPTER IX 


A Lesson in Geology 

S UPPER was over, and darkness had come on. 

The three boys and the man were sitting’ around 
their bright fire of cypress wood in front of the two 
tents. On either side of and a little behind the tents 
the two great gum trees rose straight up like shadowy 
columns, only the lower part of their trunks lit by the 
fire, and disappeared into the darkness. Behind them 
the great Swamp jungle was inky black. Toward 
the lake, by looking upward, they could see the 
stars, but on the level with their eyes was the wall of 
cane-brake, its top curiously feathery in the dancing 
firelight. 

“We are as shut in as if we were in a room, aren’t 
we ? ” said Art. “ I don’t believe you could even see 
the fire from the lake.” 

“ Come on and try,” said Peanut. 

The two boys rose and slipped through the wall 
of cane. Mr. Rogers and Rob went on talking. 
They had almost forgotten the others when suddenly 
each of them felt a bandage clapped over his eyes. 

91 


92 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

“ Great scouts, you are ! ” sniffed Peanut. “ Let 
yourselves get pinched as easy as that !” 

“What could anybody do against such expert 
stalkers as you I ” Mr. Rogers replied, with a laugh. 
“ Could you see the fire from the lake?” 

“Just a little red glow of it on the trunks of the 
two gums, from the shore,” Art answered. “ If it 
was shaded so the reflection didn^t strike the trees, 
it would be quite invisible.” 

“And now for the first class in geology,” said Mr. 
Rogers. “Peanut, what was the Pliocene age?” 

“ Good-night ! ” cried the boy. 

“ I know,” said Rob. “ It was the last age before 
the Glacial,” 

“ Good for you ! ” said Mr, Rogers. “ I won’t 
make a bluff that I know much about it myself, but 
I did study geology once in college, and I’ve read 
Professor Shaler’s report to the government on the 
Dismal Swamp. You’ll learn some day. Peanut, that 
the earth, which was once a whirling ball of gas, after 
it began to cool went through various stages of 
hardening and solidifying, during which time the 
surface hove and shifted, and made mountains and 
valleys and sea bottom. 

“ The first great geologic period — correct me, Rob, 
if I get it wrong — is called the Archaean, when there 


A LESSON IN GEOLOGY 


93 


was no life, or only the faint beginnings of life, on 
the earth. They say some of the rock strata up by 
Lake Huron belongs to this period, so that section 
of America is the oldest part of the continent, the 
first, perhaps, above water. Next came the Palaeo- 
zoic period, when there were first invertebrates, and 
then fishes, and then coal plants. The next period 
was the Mesozoic, the age of reptiles. Then came 
the Cenozoic period, the age of mammals, and the 
third part of this period is called the Pliocene age. 
The last, or Quaternary period, we are still living in. 
It began right after the Pliocene, with the Glacial 
age, when glacial ice covered much of the earth and 
eroded the surface. Got all the names straight, 
Peanut ? " 

“ Say, do you want me to crack my jaw ? ’’ Peanut 
laughed. 

“ Mr. Rogers has omitted the names of a lot of the 
subdivisions,” said Rob. ** There’s the Miocene age, 
and the Oligocene, and ’ 

“ Talk United States 1 ” cried Peanut. 

“ Well, you see the Pliocene age was pretty close 
to modern times, geologically speaking — maybe only 
a million years ago or so ” 

“ A mere trifle,” said Peanut. 

Mr. Rogers laughed. “ Anyhow, as I told you, it 


94 boy scouts in THE DISMAL SWAMP 

was the age after mammals had appeared on the 
earth. How do you suppose we know that?” 

“ By the fossils,” Rob suggested. 

‘‘ Exactly. Geologists tell all the periods by the 
fossils in the rocks. Well, when they dug the Dis- 
mal Swamp canal of course they went through a top 
layer of leaf-mould soil. Then they came to a thin 
sand deposit, and then in places to sub-sand contain- 
ing fossils of the Pliocene period. That shows that 
the Swamp rests on what we call Pliocene bed rock, 
and shows that this land was once above sea level. 
But the layer of sand over it was full of shells — you 
saw a lot on the canal banks, where the sand was 
thrown up, — and that shows it was later under the sea 
again. Whether the land sank or the sea rose, I 
can’t tell you. Probably the glaciers had something 
to do with it. But to-morrow we’ll go up the Wash- 
ington Ditch to the western side of the Swamp, and 
I’ll show you the old coast line. 

“ Well, after this sand deposit had been washed off 
the coast and laid on the sea bottom, the land again 
rose (or the sea sank) and it came up almost level. 
There is only a twenty inch eastward pitch to the 
mile in the Swamp. More than that, the land came 
up higher toward the sea, at the eastern side of the 
Swamp, and still farther retarded drainage by a kind 


A LESSON IN GEOLOGY 


95 

of natural dam. Now do you begin to see what hap- 
pened ? 

“ I suppose trees grew in it, and made leaf-mould,” 
said Art. 

‘‘ Right. There wasn’t much drainage anyway, 
and as soon as the trees and the cane-brake and the 
plants filled up the soil with roots the water was held 
as if in a sponge, and new, rotten vegetable matter 
kept adding a deposit of peaty mould, till the water 
simply couldn’t drain, and the Swamp was formed. 
If we had a spade, we could dig down right here to 
water in short order, and probably we’d find two or 
three feet or even more of nice peat and black leaf- 
mould before we struck the old sea bottom sand. 
They say there is ten feet of leaf-mould in some 
places. There are big swamps made like the Dismal 
Swamp all the way down the coast from here to 
Florida.” 

“ That’s why the bottom of the lake out there is 
sandy ; I see,” said Art. 

“ But what I don’t see,” Peanut put in, ** is why 
there’s a lake at all. Why didn’t that get filled in 
with trees, too?” 

“That puzzled me, also, till I read Professor 
Shaler’s report,” the scout master replied. “ He ex- 
plains it this way. You see, when the sea bottom 


96 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

first rose, it was arid sand. You all know things 
don’t grow well in sand. The lake, you’ll notice, is 
right in the centre of the Swamp. It was probably 
hollowed a little, and it probably filled up with rain 
water. Now the trees and vegetation tended to start 
on the edges of the big sand area, and gradually fill 
it in, just as the woods creep into a pasture up in 
Berkshire. They came on, and on, till they reached 
the lake, and there this permanent body of water, 
which didn’t dry up enough even in summer to give 
them a chance to thrive in it, stopped them. They 
just formed a peat bank all around it. Only the 
cypresses evidently kept on a way into the water, 
though a good many of them were perhaps once on 
shore, because when they built the dam down at 
Cap’n Jack’s the level of the lake was evidently 
raised two or three feet.” 

“ I get you,” said Peanut. “ But if all this Swamp 
is above sea level, why couldn’t a lot of canals be dug 
and drain it all, so’s it could be made into farms ? 
Gee, it would make fine soil I ” 

“ They could,” Mr. Rogers answered. “ People 
have been talking about that for years. The trouble 
is, it would cost so much money that it’s still cheaper 
to go buy land somewhere else.” 

“ Well, I hope they don’t do it,” said Art. ** It 


A LESSON IN GEOLOGY 


97 

sure would be a shame to spoil this wilderness, and 
drive out all the bears ! ” 

“ And we couldn’t be hiding here like fugitive 
slaves,” said Peanut, looking up at the black wall of 
the forest. Suddenly he whistled. “ Say, the moon 
is coming up ! ” he cried. “ Me for the lake ! ” 

All four rose and went to the edge of the water. 
Sure enough, a great three-quarter moon was coming 
up over the eastward forest wall, and under its golden 
light Lake Drummond was a weird and lovely spec- 
tacle. 

The dark water had disappeared. Over the entire 
lake rested a strange, white mist, rising perhaps three 
or four feet from the surface. 

Out of this mist the great bald cypresses in the 
water down the shore stood up like ghosts. There 
was at first not a sound in the world, and then, al- 
most over their heads, went a black streak, and there 
came down to them the odd whistle of the flying teal 
duck — a belated pilgrim to the North. 

My, it don’t look real,” said Peanut, almost in a 
whisper. ** You can’t see the further shore at all.” 

“ Let’s go out in the boat,” Art suggested. 

He picked up a paddle, and found it dripping with 
dew. Getting in, he and Peanut pushed off a way, 
and were soon almost lost to sight in the white mist, 


98 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

but their voices could be heard with strange dis- 
tinctness. When they came inshore again, they 
seemed, as Rob put it, just to grow out of fog, like 
the Cheshire cat’s smile in ‘ Alice in Wonderland.’ ” 

“It’s cold in that mist, all right,” said Peanut. 
“ Wow, and it’s lonely here, too. Let’s hit the hay 
— I mean the juniper boughs.” 

Back in camp, the fire had burned low, and the 
drops of dew had steamed the isinglass of the camp 
lantern. The blankets were damp. The campers 
rolled up in their ponchos first, then pulled the blan- 
kets over them. Peanut blew out the candle, and the 
moon had the lonely expanse of Lake Drummond to 
itself. 

Peanut made one remark before he went to sleep. 

“ If any sheriffs wake me up to-night,” he said, 
“ there’s goin’ to be a funeral, and I won’t ride in 
the hearse 1 ” 


CHAPTER X 

A Grunting Bear and a ’Coon Supper 
HE camp was waked suddenly the next morn- 



A ing by the crack of Art’s gun. Tumbling 
sleepily out, Peanut and Rob wriggled through the 
dew-drenched cane-brake to the strip of beach, and 
saw the lake still buried under a white sea of mist, 
while over the northeastward forest wall the red sun 
ball was just peeping up, casting long, level shadows 
far out over the white vapor. Down the shore, near 
where they had found the bear track, they saw Art. 
He was walking toward them, with something black 
in his hand. 

“ Quite a bear you have. Art,” Peanut sang out, as 
he drew near, and the black object turned out to be 
a turkey-buzzard. 

“ Bah ! ” said Art. “ I put the fish cleanings and 
the potato parings and some sugar on a stump to 
attract the bear, and hid down wind, long before day 
break, and this beastly bird came and began to gob- 
ble ’em. So I took a crack at him. Smell him. 
Peanut.” 


99 


loo BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


Art laid his gun carefully down, and began to chase 
Peanut, swinging the great black bird at his face. 
Having finally succeeded in catching him one good 
smack, he scooped a hole in the sand and buried the 
carcass. Then he went to camp, got the Cap’n’s 
saw, and departed toward the old cabin by the Wash- 
ington Ditch. While the rest were getting break- 
fast, he staggered back with a great armful of boards, 
sawed to uniform two-foot lengths, and dumped them 
on the beach. 

“ Going to build a house for your bear ? asked 
Peanut. 

Art grinned, but said nothing. 

After breakfast, while the rest were planning the 
day’s sport, he took his boards and nails, and care- 
fully built the bottom and three sides of a box. Then 
he made, separately, the top and the fourth side, and 
hinged them on to the box with two strips of tin 
from a soup can. 

“ Oh, a trap I ” said Peanut. 

The rest following, he carried this trap down the 
shore to the spot where the ’coon and ’possum tracks 
were thickest, set it down by a cypress stump, got a 
piece of stick about eight or ten inches longer than 
the depth of the box, and to this stick, near the bot- 
tom, tied some bait. Then he propped up the cover 


A BEAR AND A *COON SUPPER loi 


with the baited stick, resting the lower end carefully 
on a loose block, so that it would slip easily. This, 
of course, left one side up enough to permit an ani- 
mal to enter. Pulling at the bait, the animal would 
dislodge the stick, and down would come cover and 
side, trapping him. 

“ I don’t see how a bear’s going to get in that 
box,” laughed Rob. 

Maybe he could if he squeezed real hard,” said 
Peanut, with a wink. 

“ Go chase yourself,” said Art. And you fellers 
keep away from here till to-morrow, too. Get 
that?” 

The party, returning to camp, resolved on a day’s 
outing up the Washington Ditch to the high land. 
Lunch and gun and Rob’s camera were carried to 
the end of the Ditch, and then all four took the 
heavy dugout and hauled it up the brook and over 
the dam — no easy task. 

“It’s picturesque, this dugout, but I prefer an Old 
Town canoe if I’ve got to carry it,” puffed Rob. 

Once afloat in the Ditch, the boys dug in their pad- 
dles, and the canoe slipped silently up the lane of 
dark water. The Washington Ditch is only fifteen 
feet wide, and not more than two feet deep. There- 
fore the branches of the gums and cypresses met 


102 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


overhead, and it is just as much in shadow as the 
rest of the forest. Long, pendent rattan vines climb 
the trunks beside it, and hang out over the water. 
Pendent green moss swings down from the branches. 
The cane-brakes and cat briers on the banks, how- 
ever, make less of a tangle than on the banks of the 
larger canal, and the banks themselves are much 
lower, so that from a canoe you can often look over 
them into the woods on either side. Indeed, the 
banks have, in many places, quite disappeared, and 
you seem just to be floating along the forest floor. 

After two hundred yards the Ditch makes a slight 
bend to the left, and thereafter runs straight as an 
arrow for five miles. The boys scarcely spoke a word 
at first, it seemed so strange, so mysterious, to be 
floating along this dark water road in the very heart 
of the tropic wilderness, with only a flicker of sun- 
shine coming through on them now and then, and 
not a sound in the world save the hammer of a wood- 
pecker off in the trees. But suddenly Art gave a cry 
of delight. A brilliant red cardinal bird had crossed 
the Ditch ahead of them. He had never seen a car- 
dinal bird before. The canoe went on another mile, 
almost in silence again, when Art, who was bow pad- 
dle, suddenly made a frantic sign for silence. Softly 
he laid down his paddle, softly reached for his rifle. 


A BEAR AND A ^COON SUPPER 103 

raised it to his shoulder, the muzzle elevated into the 
trees ahead, and fired. 

The rest heard a crashing in the branches, and 
then saw something falling. Running the canoe 
against the bank, they all jumped out and ran toward 
the spot. It took some searching in the thick un- 
dergrowth, but finally Art, with a shout, picked up 
the body of a raccoon. 

“ Gee, I didn’t know you got ’em in the daytime ! ” 
he exclaimed. “Up home we chase ‘em with dogs 
and smoke ’em out at night. They’d be awful lean, 
too, this time of year. This one isn’t very fat. I 
was looking ahead, and I suddenly saw him coming 
around that limb of this big tree, the one that goes 
out from the trunk way up by that rotten place. He 
kind of stopped for a minute, as if he heard us, and 
I got a good bead on him.” 

“ Is it good to eat?” asked Peanut. 

“,You poor nut I ” said Art. “ Is it good to eat ! 
Why, it’s better’n chicken.” 

“ Well, then, we’d better not let any niggers see 
it,” Peanut laughed. “ Gee, Art, you’re a good 
shot.” 

“Ho, anybody can kill a ’coon at forty yards. 
What I want is a bear,” the other replied. 

” They sbpot most of the bears right along this 


104 boy scouts in THE DISMAL SWAMP 

Ditch,” Mr. Rogers said, “only they do it in No- 
vember when the leaves are of! and they can see 
farther into the trees.” 

The trip was now resumed. It was not long before 
they saw light ahead, and presently the canoe ran 
out into a clearing, where the Ditch widened, and 
there were at least twenty other boats and dugouts 
moored to the bank, or bottom side up on shore. 
At the head of the clearing was a cabin, and a large, 
genial old negress standing in the door. The Ditch, 
however, ran on, and the boys shoved ahead, past 
the cabin, till the canal made a wide loop and came 
back upon itself. 

“ Head waters I ” said Mr. Rogers. “ Here’s the 
loop where they turned the old canal lumber boats 
around.. Let’s leave the boat and carry our lunch 
with us.” 

“ And the ’coon ! ” cried Peanut “ Don’t want 
that swiped ! ” 

Close to the canal ran a rough road, evidently 
leading down to the negress’ cabin. They walked 
up this road, and met a pig wandering down it, — a 
lean-looking pig, grubbing for acorns. 

“There’s something to shoot. Art,” laughed Pea- 
nut, shying a stick at the pig, which made off into 
the underbrush. 


A BEAR AND A ’COON SUPPER 105 

After a few steps, they came out into a much larger 
clearing, with a house and barn in the centre. For 
the first time they saw real earth, not leaf mould, very 
sandy earth, and they noticed that the clearing sloped 
down like a beach from the house to the edge of the 
Swamp forest. 

“ Here’s your old sea beach,” said the scout mas- 
ter. “ Just imagine that line of forest, which you see 
is mostly pine now, because the Swamp is dry here, 
as the surf breaking up on the beach, which is now 
Mr. Somebody or other’s peanut field.” 

What kind of a field ? ” said Peanut. “ Let me 
at it ! ” 

He vaulted the split rail fence, and examined the 
tiny plants set in regular rows on the shelving, sandy 
field along the edge of the Swamp. 

'‘Those are peanuts, all right,” Mr. Rogers laughed. 
“ In the fall they'll be pulled up and the nuts shaken 
off the roots.” 

The boy looked over the acres of planting. “ Gee, 
there’ll be a lot of me ! ” he said. 

The party now moved on, up the cart track, for a 
quarter of a mile, going gently up-hill, and came out 
on a main road running north and south, with the 
endless line of the Swamp forest paralleling it as far 
as the eye could see on the east, and great, sandy 


lo6 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


fields, fresh planted, paralleling it on the west, with 
every now and then a gray negro’s cabin, or a larger 
farmhouse, or a clump of pine woods. The fields 
were full of negroes, gay handkerchiefs over the 
women’s heads, and along the road more negroes, or 
farmers’ boys, drove two-wheeled donkey carts. The 
plantations were busy with the spring cultivation. 
The sky was blue, the air soft and balmy, somewhere 
in the fields negroes were singing, and — 

** Gee I ” said Peanut, “ I feel like singing ‘ Dixie ^ I ” 

The rest laughed. 

“We’ve come clear across the Swamp, haven’t 
we?” said Rob. “ You can just imagine it is a kind 
of green ocean out there to the east. I suppose this 
road runs all the way down along the western side.” 

“ I believe it does, from Suffolk to North Carolina,” 
Mr. Rogers answered. “ If you ever got lost in the 
Swamp, the way to do would be to plug due west 
till you hit it.” 

“Some plug, though, believe me. Judge,” said 
Peanut. 

“ Some plug is right,” answered the scout master. 

It was now lunch time, so the party tramped up 
the road toward Suffolk until they came to a farm- 
house with a well, and begged for water. 

“ Wohter?” said the farmer, a tall, lank man with 


A BEAR AND A 'COON SUPPER 107 

a big-brimmed felt hat. “ Wall, I reckon wohter’s 
about the cheapest thing in this yere place. Help 
yo’se’f, sahs.’^ 

While the boys were drinking greedily, he exam- 
ined their khaki uniforms. 

“Pve heard o^ the boy scouts,” he remarked. 
“ Sounds like a mighty good thing to me. My boy, 
he don^ have much chance with other boys, 'cept nig- 
gers, it bein^ seven miles up to Suffolk. But I reckon 
he can shoot along with most o^ yer. He fetched down 
four wildcat out thar in the big Swamp last winter.” 

“ Wildcats — there you are. Art ! ” cried Peanut. 

“ Where is he ? ” asked Art. 

“ He's gone up to town to-day to get a new plow,” 
the man replied. “ He’ll be powerful sorry to miss 
you boys.” 

“ Don’t you go hunting ? ” said Art. 

■ ‘‘ Wall, not in the big Swamp, no, sah,” the man 
replied. “I leave that to the swampers. Sometimes 
I go fishin’ in to the lake, by the Ditch. But I reckon 
I ain’t been what you might call really into the Swamp 
since I was a boy, and got lost in thar. She’s right 
over east all the time, the Swamp is, but I like pow- 
erful well to see whar I’m goin’.” 

But it doesn’t look like very hard woods,” said 


Art. 


io8 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


I reckon you came by the Ditch, too,^’ said the 
man. “ You-all stick to the Ditch, boys, unless my 
son or George Parker is along with you.” 

“Who’s George Parker?” asked Rob. 

“ George is a swamper — a nigger who lives in the 
cabin where the Ditch lane comes out into the road. 
What he don’t know about the Swamp, ain’t. You 
come down here in November and George’ 11 git a 
bear fo’ you, if anybody can.” 

“Me for him,” laughed Art. 

After lunch was eaten, the white, sandy road 
looked hot and dusty for tramping, and the boys de- 
cided that the cool Washington Ditch back to camp 
was the place for them, so they returned to their 
boat, and soon were once more floating silently down 
the dark green aisles of the tropic forest. Art again 
in the bow, his rifle close beside him. 

They had gone perhaps a mile when Art again 
signaled for silence. Rob, at the stern, anchored the 
canoe with his paddle as Art raised his rifle, pointing 
this time along the ground. The rest heard a far-off 
crunching in the undergrowth, and could just discern 
a black form moving. as Art fired. 

There was a sudden terrific squeal of agony. Art 
looked surprised. Peanut emitted a roar of laughter. 

“ Gee, that’s a queer sounding bear ! ” he cried. 


A BEAR AND A ^COON SUPPER 109 


The four now rushed toward the spot where the 
squeals were still coming from, and there on the 
ground lay a big black pig ! Art quickly emptied 
another shell into its breast, and ended the poor 
beast’s agony. 

“Fm sorry,” he said. “Poor pig! But it sure 
looked just like a bear through the underbrush. I 
never thought about pigs running ’round in the 
woods.” 

“Say,” Rob remarked, “a pig is usually some- 
body’s property. Do you suppose it belongs to that 
old nigger mammy up at the end of the Ditch?” 

“Well, what do you think that we, as scouts, 
ought to do about it ? ” Mr. Rogers put in. 

“ Find out,” said Art, laconically. 

The pig had run wild too long to be fat, but he 
weighed at least two hundred pounds, and he was a 
hard haul back to the boat. The negress was at her 
cabin door as they approached. 

“ Want some bacon ? ” asked Peanut. 

“What you-all talkin’ ’bout?” the old negress 
laughed. 

“ Did you own a big black pig?” asked Rob. 

“Sho's yo’ bo’n,” she replied, coming to the bank, 
“ an’ bless de Lawd, if that ain’t ol’ Rastus I What 
you-all shoot him fo’, you tell me that?” 


no BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


“ I thought he was a bear,’^ said Art. 

You ainT fit to have no gun I ’’ she sniffed con- 
temptuously. 

Peanut chuckled, as Art turned red. 

“ Of course we’ll pay you for it,” Art replied. 
‘‘ How much is — is Rastus worth ? ” 

The old mammy half closed her eyes cunningly. 
‘‘Well, Ah reckon ’bout fo’ dollars,” she said. 

“ All right,” said Art, “ and we’ll keep the pig for 
bacon.” 

“ You-all ’ll keep nothin’ ! ” she cried. “You give 
me the pig, an’ two dollars.” 

“ That’s fifty cents apiece,” said Peanut. “ Let 
her go.” 

“No,” Art declared, fishing his money from an 
inside pocket. “ I pay this. It was all my fault.” 

He paid the money, and the pig was carried to 
the cabin door. They left the old negress mutter- 
ing. “ Po’ Rastus, po’ Rastus,” she was saying ; 
“ he won’ be no good ; wa’n’t bled right, nohow ! ” 

“ Well, she got her pig and two dollars beside,” 
laughed Rob, as they paddled back up the Ditch. 

“ But Art didn’t get his bear,” said Peanut. 

Art said nothing. 

As soon as they were back in camp. Art started 
in to skin his ’coon. His bullet had gone clear 


A BEAR AND A 'COON SUPPER iii 


through the animars chest, from one side to the 
other, so there were two holes in the skin, but Art 
wanted it for a souvenir, and before long he had it 
off, washed, and nailed on a board to dry in the sun. 

“Now,” said he, surveying the body thus revealed, 
“ how are we going to cook the critter?” 

“You’ve got to parboil him first, after you’ve 
cleaned him,” said the scout master. “ I don’t know 
whether we’ve got a kettle large enough.” 

“ Cut him in halves, and use two kettles,” Peanut 
suggested. 

“ Sometimes you show almost human intelligence. 
Peanut,” laughed Art. 

Art now carefully split the ’coon, removed its 
head and entrails, washed it, filled the two camp 
kettles with water, and doubled the two sections of 
meat into them, putting them over a low fire to 
parboil. 

“ Ma always bakes ’coon meat at home, when we 
get one,” he said, “ but I don’t see how we can bake 
here. Guess we’ll have to roast it. What can we 
use for a spit ? ” 

“That’s a problem,” said Rob. “Now, if your 
gun only had a ramrod, we could use that.” 

“ But it hasn’t,” Art replied. “ Try again.” 

“ I’ve got it I ” cried Peanut. 


112 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


He took two forks, and tied the handle of each 
firmly to the end of a stick. 

“ Now jab one of these in each end of the meat,” 
said he, “and two of us can hold it over the fire, 
and turn it.” 

“ Gee, you’re a second Edison ! ” said Art. “ I 
guess that’ll work.” 

When the ’coon was sufficiently parboiled, one of 
the pieces was selected, the forks were thrust in, and 
Art and Peanut held it as on a spit against the fire, 
turning it slowly around and around, while Rob and 
Mr. Rogers drummed on their plates and declared 
their mouths were watering already. 

Art finally declared the meat cooked. “ Looks 
kind of lean, though,” he said dubiously, as he 
started to carve it. “ Cuts so, too,” he added. 

Everybody took a piece, salted it, and began to 
chew. There was silence. Presently Peanut got up. 

“ I guess I’ll fry an egg,” he said. 

“ If you don’t mind, put on a couple for me,” Rob 
remarked. 

“ I’ll take the same,” Mr. Rogers added. 

“ Something tells me you don’t like my ’coon,” 
said Art, sadly. 

“Your ’coon’s all right, Art; it tastes fine,” an- 
swered Rob, — “ only I can’t quite get it chewed. 


A BEAR AND A ’COON SUPPER 113 

I’m afraid he didn’t get much to eat last winter* 
He’s kind of lean.” 

“ Lean’s the word,” said Peanut. “ Only I’m so 
much like George Washington that I’ve got to ad- 
mit it don’t seem to have much taste to me.” 

“ Maybe it would have been better baked,” said 
Art. “ But I don’t think it’s so bad. I’ve eaten my 
piece.” 

“ Here, then, have mine I ” cried Peanut. 
“Thanks,” said Art, “but I guess I’ll have an 
egg, too.” 

The other half of the ’coon was never cooked. 


CHAPTER XI 


Lost in the Great Swamp 
HE next morning, which was Tuesday, Art as 



A usual was up first, and down to his trap. He 
returned while the rest were at their morning bath, 
bringing the closed trap with him. The others, 
peeking between the boards, saw the gleaming, ter- 
rified eyes of a small animal within, which didn’t 
move, but sat on the bottom of the trap as if rooted 
with fear. 

“ What is it ? ” asked Peanut. “ Looks like a 
cross between a ’coon and a monkey, with a dash 
of pig.” 

“Isn’t it a ’possum, Mr. Rogers?” said Art. 

“ It is,” the scout master replied. “ What are you 
going to do with him ? ” 

“ Oh, keep him,” Art answered. “ Kind of a camp 
mascot.” 

After breakfast he got some more boards, and 
made a small cage for the poor ’possum, which at 
first refused to eat, but later consented to take a bit 
of food in his paws, which he sniffed with his pointed 
nose, dipped in the dish of water Art bad set in his 


JI4 


LOST IN THE GREAT SWAMP 115 

cage, and then ate. His paws were almost like 
little hands, in spite of their claws. 

“ Washes his food I ” Peanut laughed. Wonder 
if he boils the water, too ? He must belong to the 
’Possum Patrol of the boy scouts I ” 

It was a cloudy day, with heavy air, so that the 
farther shore of the lake was almost invisible. The 
lake looked twenty miles across. Rob said he felt 
like going fishing, to get some fresh food. Art said 
he felt like going hunting. “ For bears ? ” snickered 
Peanut. Mr. Rogers said he felt like doing what the 
rest did. Peanut said he felt like playing baseball. 

As a result of this difference of opinion, Rob and 
Mr. Rogers took the canoe and fishing-tackle, and 
Art and Peanut stayed on shore with the gun. 

“You can hunt mistletoe. Peanut,” the scout mas- 
ter said. “ Know it when you see it ? It will look 
like a big green bird’s nest, sometimes as big as a 
bushel basket, up in the trees — mostly maples. I’ve 
found.” 

“ What’s the use of mistletoe without some girls 
around ? ” Peanut laughed. 

“ And take your compass. Art,” Mr. Rogers added, 
“ and keep along the shore of the lake. Remember 
that. The hunting’s just as good along shore. Be 
back at noon. Remember, keep along shore ! ” 


ii6 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


The canoe moved out over the dark water. Art 
shouldered his gun, and he and Peanut crossed the 
brook and began to walk southward, on the west 
bank. 

They walked for an hour along the shore, which 
on this side of the lake is elevated two or three feet 
from the water, and has no beach. They passed two 
or three hunters’ shanties, built of rough boards, 
facing the lake, but saw no signs of game. The 
canoe had disappeared from sight. Evidently Rob 
and Mr. Rogers had gone to the other side to fish. 
After two hours the boys found themselves at the 
southern end of Lake Drummond. Here they began 
to have serious trouble in walking, for the Swamp 
became more truly swampy, the banks sank down, 
the cypresses began to grow out into the water once 
more, and the tangle of briers and undergrowth was 
rank. Stopping to debate what they should do, they 
suddenly heard twigs snap off in the Swamp. Art’s 
gun went up, and, breathless, they waited. The 
snapping grew fainter. Whatever was making it 
was evidently retreating. The two boys plunged 
away from the lake into the dense woods in pursuit. 

Wriggling through a patch of cane-brake, they 
came out into a comparative clearing, and far away 
between the trees they saw a daub of white on a 


LOST IN THE GREAT SWAMP 117 

larger daub of tawny yellow. Art fired. The deer 
leaped into the air with a sideways spring and 
bounded on. The excited boys leaped after him. 

“ Maybe I hit him, he jumped so,” panted Art. 

Coming up to the spot where the deer had been, 
they looked for traces of blood, but found none. 

“ Well, we’ll trail him a bit on a chance,” cried 
Art, and they kept on. But the marks of a trail 
were few — here a hoof-print in the soil, there a bit 
of broken cane-brake. After a while, as they were 
hurrying along, bewildered by the blindness of the 
trail. Art stubbed his toe on one of the sharp cypress 
knees which stick up like pickets all over the Swamp, 
six inches or a foot above the ground, and fell heav- 
ily on his side. He held his gun up, however, so 
there could be no danger of an explosion. Peanut 
ran to him. 

“ Hurt ? ” he asked. 

'‘No,” said Art, “but something smashed in my 
pocket. Must have been the compass.” 

He put in his hand, and drew out the compass. 
The end of a cypress knee had hit it squarely, and 
the top was stove in hard. 

“ Well, if it’s broken, we can put the needle on a 
pin just as well,” said Peanut. 

Art finally managed to unscrew the cover. The 


1 18 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


glass beneath was shattered, and the needle smashed 
squarely in half ! 

‘‘Whew!” whistled Peanut. “Oh, well, what’s 
the odds ? We aren’t far from the lake. Let’s go 
back now. Must be time.” 

He looked at his watch. “Wow 1 It’s after twelve 
now I We’d better beat it.” 

But they had failed to realize how far they had 
come from the lake, and, more than that, when they 
started after the deer they had been too excited to note 
the exact direction. Though it was cloudy, and get- 
ting rapidly darker, the sky was still perceptibly 
lighter in one quarter, presumably the south, where 
the sun now stood. But whether they had come 
south from the lake, or southwest, or even southeast, 
they could not now be sure. 

“ Well, there are our tracks,” declared Art. “We’ll 
just have to follow them back.” 

But where were they ? They lost them in a short 
distance. A deer print sinks in, but on this carpet 
of leafage human footprints are almost undetectable. 
Moreover, they came presently on a deer print going 
in the same direction as themselves, so they couldn’t 
be sure that any trail they were following was the 
right one. 

Art unslung his hatchet and blazed trees as they 


LOST IN THE GREAT SWAMP 119 

went along. They tried to go away from where 
they thought the sun was, but the sky was getting 
darker, and half the time they couldn’t get a glimpse 
of it, anyway, the forest trees were so thick. After 
half an hour they suddenly came back upon one of 
their own blazes. 

“ We are just circling. Peanut,” said Art. We’re 
in for it, I guess.” 

Peanut went white. “ Fire your gun,” he said. 

Art fired three times in rapid succession. 

“ But we can’t be sure Rob and Mr. Rogers will 
hear,” he added. “ They are back at camp by now, 
waiting for us. They must be at least four or even 
five miles away, and we are in the deep woods, and 
the wind maybe is dead against us now. Hark, it’s 
blowing like the mischief.” 

“Well, we’ll just have to wait, won’t we?” 

“ They don’t know the Swamp any better than we 
do,” Art replied, “and they don’t even know what 
part of it we are in.” 

“Well, they haven’t anything on us there!” said 
Peanut, with a wry grin. 

“ Glad you can joke,” said Art. 

“ Oh, I’m not going to cave yet,” Peanut replied 
bravely. “ You know what Mr. Rogers said yester- 
day about that road ? Well, we don’t know where 


120 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


the lake is, so we might miss it, and go clear across 
the Swamp to the east, but we do know that if we 
go west, we’ll come to a road in five or six miles. 
All we’ve got to do is to wait for the sun, and use 
our watches for compass. We can keep firing while 
we wait.” 

“ No, we can’t,” said Art. ‘‘ She had a full maga- 
zine when I left, and I put half a dozen shells in my 
pocket. We took four practice shots up the lake, I 
fired at the deer, and three times since. That makes 
only eight rounds left.” 

‘‘ Well, save ’em till the wind goes down, and let’s 
camp here till the sun comes out.” 

“The sun ! ” said Art “ Gee, it’s begun to rain ! ” 

It had. Already they could hear the big drops 
on the leaves overhead. They quickly set about 
gathering a supply of dry fuel, chopping madly, and 
securing some dry kindling stuff from dead twigs 
and cane-brake. Then they found four small sap- 
lings which made a tiny square, put a frame of poles 
from the branches, and over this frame they laid as 
much cane-brake as they could gather. The long 
ends hung down behind, and the whole effect was 
like the thatched roof on a Filipino hut. As the 
rain began to work through the dense foliage over- 
head and came soaking down into the woods, the 


LOST IN THE GREAT SWAMP 121 

boys huddled beneath their thatch, which shed the 
water pretty well, and lit their fire. 

“ Oh, for something to cook on it I ” cried Peanut. 
“ Tve got a hole in me as big as a cellar. And Pve 
got a thirst, too.^’ 

“ Well, we can have a drink, anyhow,” said Art. 
He sharpened a stick, and began to dig. After a 
couple of feet, the black hole began to fill. Soon 
there was a pool on the bottom. After it had settled, 
the boys dipped in their tin drinking cups, and got 
the regular, amber-colored, bitter Swamp water. 

“ But it only makes you hungrier,” wailed Peanut, 
as he snapped his cup shut again. 

‘‘Just the same, we stay here till the sun comes 
out,” said Art. “Maybe they’ve come down the 
lake looking for us. I’ll fire a shot.” 

He did so, and the two boys waited with straining 
ears. But there was no response except the pour- 
ing drip of the rain and the lashing of wind-tossed 
branches overhead. The boys shrank back under 
their shelter, and huddled gloomily over the fire as 
the long afternoon wore on. 


CHAPTER XII 

Rain, and the Water Rising 

M eanwhile Rob and Mr. Rogers had gone 
back to camp at noon with a string of bass, 
and waited lunch nearly an hour for the other boys. 
Then they began to grow anxious. 

“ Seems queer that Art, who is such a good woods- 
man, should have let himself get lost,” said Rob. 
“ They must be on the trail of something.” 

“ Probably,” the scout master answered shortly, 
looking out again along the shore. “ But we’ll 
snatch a bite and paddle ’round the pond. I wish 
we had something that made more noise than my 
automatic pistol. That won’t carry any distance in 
this rain and wind.” 

The rain was pouring down when they started 
out, and the wind had kicked up the shallow lake 
into a nasty, high chop. They ran along the west 
shore, with the wind behind them, and fired the 
automatic from time to time. But their straining 

eats heard no response. By the time they had 
122 


RAIN, AND THE WATER RISING 123 

reached the southern side of the lake, the driving 
rain had got in under their ponchos, and through 
the neck holes, and they were soaked. Turning 
now into the wind, it was all Mr. Rogers could do, 
pulling on the oars, to make progress, and all Rob 
could do with the stern paddle to hold the heavy 
canoe on her course. They were over two hours 
beating back to camp along the east shore. 

Off the camp, they shouted, but there was no 
response. The boys were not back ! 

Rob looked at Mr. Rogers. “ Gee, that’s bad,” he 
said. “ What can we do now ? Do you suppose 
they’ve had a gun accident?” 

** No,” the scout master replied. Get that idea 
out of your head. The gun wouldn’t hit both of ’em. 
They are lost, that’s all. They took a compass, and 
they have matches and hatchets. I’ll trust ’em to 
keep their heads over a night. But just the same, 
we’ve got to get help if they don’t come back before 
dark. I’ll go up the Ditch to the coast, and hire a 
lot of negro guides to beat the Swamp right in to 
the lake as soon as daylight comes. Let’s get the 
canoe into the Ditch now.” 

It was a hard haul for the two of them alone, and 
they noticed that the brook was higher than the day 
before. The Ditch was over its banks. 


124 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

“ The Swamp’s up already 1 ” exclaimed the scout 
master. ‘‘ That’s bad I ” 

“ How can you paddle to the coast in the dark?” 
asked Rob. “ Look, it’s almost black in the woods 
there now.” 

“ I’m going to start right off,” said Mr. Rogers. 
“ Go bring me the camp lantern and extra candles. 
You keep the revolver, and fire it once in a while all 
night.*^ Keep a big fire going on the shore of the 
lake. That’s your job. And stick to camp 1 ” 

Rob ran back to camp for the lantern. When he 
returned, Mr. Rogers fastened it to the bow of the 
canoe, and pushed off into the rapidly dusking forest. 
It shed a tiny, flickering light a few feet around, just 
enough so that the paddler could see the trunks of 
the trees on either bank, and keep his course in the 
canal. As the spot of light disappeared up the Ditch, 
and round the bend, Rob felt lonelier and lonelier. 
He walked back to camp, and began to chop up 
cypress stumps in the fast falling twilight, kindling a 
big bonfire on the edge of the water. Its red reflec- 
tion lit up the forest wall behind him, and the dark 
water in front, and made the loneliness and blackness 
even lonelier and blacker. He didn’t feel like cook- 
ing supper. He just heated himself some soup and 
made some coffee, now and then stopping to fire 


RAIN, AND THE WATER RISING 125 

the revolver and listen with strained ears. There 
was never a reply. But the wind, he noted, was 
going down, and the rain had about ceased. 

“ Thank the Lord for that,” he thought, ‘‘ the water 
won’t get any deeper in the Swamp.” 

The rain ceased entirely at ten o’clock. Rob re- 
moved his wet clothes, got some dry ones from the 
tent, and hung the others by the big fire. The night 
had come up cold. He put on a sweater and 
crouched close to the blaze, thinking how Peanut and 
Art must be suffering in the woods. It was a long, 
dismal night for him, nor did he go to sleep at all, 
for fear the fire might go down. Every fifteen min- 
utes he fired the automatic. 

Toward morning he noticed some stars, and pres- 
ently the east reddened, and the sun came up. Two 
hours later he heard the far-off, faint crack of guns to 
the west. 

“ The beaters are coming in from the coast ! ” he 
cried aloud, to himself. 


CHAPTER XIII 

A Wild Night in the Swamp, and Rescue 


E left Peanut and Art under their cane-brake 



V V shelter, dismally waiting the passage of time. 
About five o’clock the ground began to get damp 
under them. 

“ Say, the water must be rising under the ground,” 
said Art. He got up and looked in the spring hole. 
“ Full to the top ! ” he said. 

Peanut, who was cold and mournful now, took a 
look, also. “ S’pose it’ll rise any higher ? ” he asked. 
** Maybe we’d better climb a tree.” 

Art thought a moment. “ No,” he replied, ** we 
must be in a low place. Three or four hours’ rain 
couldn’t fill up a whole swamp level. We’ll have to 
duck from here, though, I guess, or the fire’ll go 


“ Couldn’t we build the fire up on logs ? I hate to 
leave this shelter. I’m wet enough now.” 

Might try,” said Art briefly. 

They worked hard for half an hour, in the fast 
waning light, and got a supply of logs cut up, making 
a rough floor for the shelter by building up on cross- 


A WILD NIGHT, AND RESCUE 127 

pieces, and elevated the fire. The rain had mod- 
erated when they had finished, but the water con- 
tinued, of course, to rise for some hours. It slowly 
crept up till they could see it all around them, shining 
on the forest floor in the firelight. 

It was very uncomfortable under the shelter, on 
the rough, uneven logs. Even the fire, just in front 
of them, which they kept going, was not sufficient 
to keep them warm. They were bitterly hungry. 
Every now and then they had to forage around in 
the dark and get more green logs to put under the 
fire, as it burned its way down to the water. Each 
of these trips soaked their boots anew. 

** Bought these shoes for waterproof,” wailed Pea- 
nut, “ but the water’s got through ’em all right.” 

He took them off, sitting on the logs under the 
shelter, and thrust his feet out toward the blaze. 

‘‘ This is the Dismal Swamp, all right,” he added, 
‘‘ with the dismal in big type.” 

“ I’d give all the money I’ve got in my pocket for 
a ham sandwich,” said Art. 

“ If you talk about food,” said Peanut, “ I’ll — I’ll 
cry!” 

After a time they lay down on the damp, uneven 
logs and tried to sleep. But sleep was pretty diffi- 
cult. The uncomfortable bed soon woke them up. 


128 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


groaning. Besides, they were cold, bitterly cold ; 
almost numb. It seemed as if morning would never 
come. 

But it came at last. As the light began to creep 
in through the wet forest, Art was out of the shelter, 
looking round. 

“ Hi, Peanut,” he cried. “ It’s going to be pleas- 
ant ! I see a star ! We’ll have the sun for compass ! 
Only five miles to the road ! ” 

They waited impatiently for the dawn. As soon 
as it came they dashed through water up to their 
ankles toward a more open spot in the woods. The 
ground, softened by the water, stuck to their shoes, 
and walking was hard. But in the opening they 
could detect where the dawn was reddest. 

“ That’s north of east, then,” said Art. “ Now, the 
Washington Ditch goes north of west. If we go 
sharp northwest we ought to come out somewhere 
near the end of it, if we don’t hit it first.” 

Peanut reflected. ** Hold on,” he said ; “ if we are 
way south of the lake somewhere, and go northwest, 
that’ll give us ’most twice as much Swamp to walk 
through. Due west, I say, and get to the road as 
quick as we can.” 

“ Maybe you’re right,” Art replied. “ Well, west 
it is. How do you feel ? ” 


A WILD NIGHT, AND RESCUE 129 

“ Hungry,” said Peanut, with a grim laugh, “ and 
kind of faint, and all damp and chilled. Otherwise, 
Pm all right” 

‘‘ Well, we’ve got to do it ; so here goes. Brace 
up. Take a hitch in your belt That’s what the 
Indians do when they are hungry.” 

‘‘ I ain’t an Indian,” said Peanut “ I’d rather 
have bacon and eggs.” 

They fired one of their few remaining precious 
shells, waited a minute or two for reply, and then 
started off through the Swamp. They soon found 
that they had, indeed, been camping in a depression. 
The ground grew drier, but there was the perpetual 
cat brier to fight, and progress was slow and pain- 
ful. They soon had torn hands and scratched faces. 
Every time they reached an opening in the trees, 
they took note of the sun, which by now was getting 
up, and finally it got high enough so they could see 
it, and get a real cpmpass direction by pointing the 
hour hand of their watches at it, and taking half 
the distance between the hand and the figure twelve 
on the dial as south. 

** Lucky we learned that trick ! ” said Peanut. 

After a mile or so. Art paused. “ Look here,” he 
said; “if we are way south of the lake, it’s likely 
that Mr. Rogers and Rob will be looking for us 


130 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

farther north first. They’ll start out where they last 
saw us on the shore. Now, if we keep due west, we 
may stay too far south to hear their pistol. If we 
edge north of west, it will be bringing us nearer.” 

“All right,” said Peanut. “I don’t care what 
happens now. I’m so hungry ! ” 

Art looked at him. He was very pale, with rings 
under his eyes. Art, too, was hungry and tired, but 
he had stood the night better. 

“Come on. Bob,” he said, using Peanut’s real 
name. “We’ve got to get out of here. You let 
me be guide, now, and keep plugging.” 

“ I’m — I’m all right,” said Peanut, “ but you may 
be captain.” 

They started off once more, edging northwest, and 
taking frequent observations whenever they got a 
shaft of sunlight. From one point they would select 
the farthest tree they could see in the compass line 
and make straight for it, then take another observa- 
tion, and go on again. Sometimes this took them 
through big holes up to their knees in mud and 
water ; sometimes through tall, wet cane-brake which 
drenched them like rain ; sometimes through cat 
briers where they had to chop with their knives, 
but they were taking no chances on getting off the 
straight line, Once a great brier tore Peanut’s hand, 


A WILD NIGHT, AND RESCUE 131 

so he had to bind it with his handkerchief. Another 
ripped Art’s sleeve from elbow to wrist, tearing right 
through the khaki. It would have been hard work 
on a full breakfast. The boys had eaten nothing for 
twenty-four hours. 

Suddenly, as they were pausing to take an observa- ' 
tion, they heard, faint and far apparently to the north, 
the crack of a gun. 

“ Hi ! there they are ! ” cried Peanut. “ Fire, Art, 
fire ! ” 

Art shook his head. “ No,” he said. “ I’ve only 
three shells left. That’s not enough so they could 
find us if we stayed here, and if I fire and then we 
move on, they’ll only get lost looking for us. We 
must keep ahead.” 

“ You fire that gun ! ” cried Peanut. 

“I won’t,” said Art. “You elected me captain.” 

“ Captain or no captain,” Peanut said, “ you fire, 
or I will I ” 

Art shook his head, and Peanut made a grab for 
the rifle. 

Art held it away from him, and gave him a shove 
with all his strength. 

“ See here. Peanut,” he cried, “ you’re hungry and 
tired, and so’m I, and we mustn’t fight. We’ve got 
to get out of here as quick as we can, or we’ll starve 


132 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

to death. This is the real thing we’re up against 
now, not just the woods round Loon Lake at home. 
Now, you come on, or I’ll crack you with the butt of 
this gun, and carry you I” 

Poor Peanut looked a little ashamed. 

“Sorry, Art,” he said. “You’re right. I guess 
it’s no food made me act so.” 

Art slapped him on the shoulder. “ Good old 
Bob,” he said, “that’s the talk. Now, forward 
march ! ” 

They toiled on for another hour, hearing the guns 
from time to time, less to the north, and more to the 
east ; but making no reply themselves. They were 
both so weary by now that progress was slow. 

“ Looks to me,” Art said, “ as if those guns were 
going east, away from us. Maybe Mr. Rogers went 
back to the road, and is beating in to the lake. If 
that’s so, we are getting nearer the coast. When 
they are due east of us. I’ll fire ; then, if they come 
back, they’ll pick us up.” 

They kept on. It seemed hours, but probably 
wasn’t more than half of one hour before the Swamp 
changed character. They had been going along 
over fairly dry ground, with the trees widely enough 
spaced to admit shafts of sun, the tall, straight black 
gums predominating. They had made fair progress. 


133 


A WILD NIGHT, AND RESCUE 

perhaps a mile or more. But suddenly they found 
themselves entering a forest of bald cypresses, with 
the water and mud deep about their roots, and pend- 
ent vines and mosses hanging down in a mighty 
tangle everywhere, and some of the trees perfectly 
gigantic in girth. To make matters worse, for the 
first time they saw a snake, a big, black and reddish 
fellow dangling over a low limb. The thing slid off 
into the water as they approached. 

Moccasins ! ” cried Peanut, going whiter yet. 
** They are deadly, and we’ve no first aid kit here. 
Say, I won’t go into that place ! ” 

“ What can we do ? ” said Art. “ It’s right in the 
path. The moccasins won’t touch you. Cap’n Jack 
told me so. Here, let’s get a compass line first.” 

They got the line in a shaft of sunlight, and started 
into the gloomy, strange, cypress forest. The water 
rose over their boots when they missed a hummock, 
and the sharp pickets of the knees were a constant 
menace to footing. The spot was indescribably dis- 
mal, forbidding, almost terrifying with the huge 
trunks rising in the gloom and the black water filled 
with deadly snakes. 

A moccasin slid off a limb almost in front of Pea- 
nut’s face. The boy gave a yell. 

** I won’t do it,” he said. “ Let’s go back and turn 


134 boy scouts in THE DISMAL SWAMP 

north. We’ve got west of the lake by this time, sure, 
and we are bound to reach the Washington Ditch. 
I won’t go any farther in there.” 

“ All right, I guess we’ll have to,” Art admitted. 

They got back to the more open forest, and headed 
north. Presently they heard a gun, eastward of 
them I 

“ We’re in the line at last I ” cried Art. He raised 
his rifle and fired. They waited a moment, and 
heard three answering shots ! 

“ What’ll I do now ? ” said Art. “ I’ve only two 
shells left. Let’s push north, toward the Ditch.” 

After struggling on for fifteen minutes, with re- 
newed strength, they heard shots again, still to the 
east, but this time nearer, and from three different 
quarters. 

The beaters are coming back ! ” Art cried. He 
fired again. Again there was an answer. They 
pushed on once more. Every few moments they 
heard shots, constantly closing in. Finally one 
sounded quite close, to the east. Art fired his final 
shell. 

“ Now, let’s wait here,” he said, and see what 
happens. Let’s shout.” 

Peanut sank exhausted and faint on the ground, 
but both boys set their hands to their mouths, and 


A WILD NIGHT, AND RESCUE 135 

yelled. Peanut also put his fingers against his 
tongue, and blew a shrill whistle. From a quarter 
of a mile away, it seemed, came an answering shrill. 

They kept up their noise, and in five minutes they 
heard the crack of underbrush, and Mr. Rogers and 
a young negro burst into sight. 

Well I ” said Mr. Rogers, with a great sigh of 
relief, “ here you are I Anybody hurt ? ” 

“ No,” said Peanut, “but somebody’s hungry !” 

The negro raised his gun, an old muzzle loader, 
and fired twice, then reloaded and fired twice 
more. 

“ Signal to the rest,” said Mr. Rogers. “ Now, 
back to the Ditch. Here, eat this sweet chocolate. 
Can you get there. Peanut ? It’s only a mile.” 

“Yes, sir,” said Peanut, his mouth already full of 
the chocolate. 

Without so much as taking the trouble to glance 
at the sun, the young negro started off, the rest 
following. 

“ Gee, it’s easy enough for him 1 ” exclaimed Art 
admiringly. 

“ Now, boys,” said Mr. Rogers, “ tell me how it 
happened. I’m not going to do any calling-down 
till I’ve heard your side.” 

'* Well,” Art answered, “ it was owr fati!t at first. 


136 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

We followed a deer into the woods south of the 
lake, and we got pretty excited and chased him 
farther than we thought. But we’d have been all 
right, only I tripped on a cypress knee and the 
compass got smashed to smithereens in my pocket. 
Then we tried to work back by the lightest spot in 
the sky, but the rain soon came. We couldn’t find 
our own trail, and pretty soon we found, by making 
blazes, that we were circling. So we just camped 
for the night, and waited for the sun. I only had 
eight cartridges left, so we couldn’t fire much. Be- 
sides, we were down wind from you.” 

‘‘ And, gosh, but we were cold and hungry 1 ” said 
Peanut. 

Mr. Rogers looked at him. He was staggering 
along, very white in the face, and holding his hand 
over his side. 

What’s the matter ? ” the scout master asked. 

“I — I got a stitch,” Peanut answered, with a 
wince. “I guess it’s from being so empty.” 

In spite of his protests, Mr. Rogers picked him 
up and carried him. “ Go on with your story,” he 
added to Art. 

Art told of the camp, the rising water, the log 
floor they had built, and then of the hike at sun-up, 
by watch compass. He said nothing, however, about 


A WILD NIGHT, AND RESCUE 137 

the fight. When he got to that point, Peanut inter- 
rupted. 

“ He’s leaving out something, Mr. Rogers. We 
had a scrap when he wouldn’t fire. I tried to get 
the gun from him, and he ’most knocked me down, 
and I guess he was right, ’cause somebody has to 
be captain. I kind of lost my head, I was so dizzy 
and hungry.” 

“ That’s all right,” Mr. Rogers answered. • “ Older 
men than you have gone off their heads when they 
were lost and starving, and fought their best friends. 
If you’ve made it square with Art, it’s nobody else’s 
business.” 

“ It never happened. Peanut, so forget it,” said 
Art. 

Art went on with his tale, and described the great 
cypress wood they tried to enter, and the snakes. 
The negro guide turned around at this. 

‘‘ You-all got to the cypress swamp, eh ? ” he said. 
‘‘Ah’m powerful glad Ah didn’ have to go in thar 
fer you. Them snakes is sure devils.” 

“What’s the cypress swamp, Joe?” Mr. Rogers 
asked. 

“Ah reckon it’s just a patch o’ swamp wetter’n 
the rest, whar they never cut no lumber off,” the 
guide answered. “All this yere has been cut off. 


138 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

but in the cypress swamp they ain’t never cut; no, 
sah. They ain’t reg’lar water moccasins in thar, 
they is real cottonmouth devils.” 

“ That’s what I told you, Art,” said Peanut. 

“Well, boys, you saw a bit of the real Dismal 
Swamp, as it was two hundred years ago, anyhow,” 
Mr. Rogers laughed. “I’m glad you turned back. 
I think you did good work after you found you were 
lost. But when you’ve got some breakfast into your 
stomachs. I’m going to give you a lacing down for 
going so far from the lake, even with a compass. 
And it’s your fault. Art ; you are the hunter.” 

“Yes, sir,” said Art. 

A few steps more, and they were suddenly on the 
bank of the Washington Ditch. Mr. Rogers put 
Peanut down, and the negro fired his gun. There 
was an answer up-stream, and in a few moments 
a boat appeared, paddled by a second negro, who 
looked at the boys keenly, but said nothing. 

In less than half an hour the open light of the 
lake appeared. They disembarked at the dam, and 
in another moment were on the beach. There was 
Rob, in the dugout, just off shore ! With a great 
shout of relief and welcome, he drove the canoe up 
on the sand. On the beach, too, was a young white 
man and an older negro, both with guns. 


A WILD NIGHT, AND RESCUE 139 

‘‘ Well, we’ve found ’em,” Mr. Rogers cried. “ Now 
everybody come back to camp for breakfast.” 

Mr. Rogers took Peanut and Art in hand while 
Rob was getting breakfast. The older negro, who 
turned out to be George Parker, the famous 
“ swamper,” produced an ax from a hiding place not 
fifty feet from camp, and cut fire- wood. The scout 
master first got off all the boys’ clothes and rubbed 
them down with some brandy, then got them into 
dry clothes and made them lie down, wrapped in 
blankets. The smell of bacon and coffee was soon 
floating up from the fire. The coffee went to Peanut 
and Art first, to warm them up, and then a little 
food ; and then they had to wait and see the rest 
eat, while their empty stomachs took care of the first 
morsels. 

The color began to come back to Peanut’s cheeks, 
and soon he was sitting up and laughing. After 
breakfast the two boys told their story all over again 
for George Parker’s benefit. 

You say you-all followed the bright spot in the 
sky at noon?” he asked. 

“ Yes,” said Art. “ We reckoned that was where 
the sun was, so we went away from it to get 
north.” 

‘‘Well, you-all must have gone down into No’th 


140 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

Car’lina, sho’ ’nufi,” George replied. “ ’Bout noon 
I was lookin’ at the sky, an’ I see it was lighter in 
the ndthy where the sun ain’t. Sometimes it’s that 
way, yass, sah.” 

“ Wow ! and we were going south all the time I ” 
cried Peanut. “No wonder we couldn’t hear your 
guns.” 

“ How far do you reckon we went?” asked Art 

“ Ah reckon you must have been ’bout ten miles 
from yeah,” George replied. “ If you’d kep’ on, we 
sho’ never would have found you.” 

“ Well, it was a close squeak, boys,” said Mr. 
Rogers, gravely. “I guess you need sleep more 
than a calling-down just now. Into the tents with 
you ! ” 

Peanut and Art needed no second invitation. In 
a very few moments, rolled in blankets, they were 
fast asleep. 

Rob and Mr. Rogers went back to the Ditch with 
the four swampers who had aided in the search. 
The white man, a farmer from “ the coast,” would 
take no pay, but Mr. Rogers insisted that the guides 
take their usual fee for a day’s work. Then he and 
Rob walked soberly back. The strain of the night 
had been severe on both of them, and they, too, were 
tired and sleepy. Though it was now noon, Mr. 


A WILD NIGHT, AND RESCUE 141 


Rogers first felt the pulses of the two sleeping scouts, 
and laid his hand on their foreheads to see if there 
was any sign of fever, and then he and Rob also 
curled up for a nap. 


CHAPTER XIV 

Peanut as a Policeman 

I T was four o’clock when Peanut woke up. He 
felt better, but as he rolled over he realized that 
he was stiff and sore. Art was not beside him. 
Looking through the open tent end, he saw that 
nobody was in camp. 

“ Gee, I wonder if it’s to-morrow 1 ” he said aloud. 
He consulted his watch. “ Four o’clock. No, if it 
was to-morrow the watch would have run down,” he 
added to himself. 

Getting up stiffly, he slipped through the cane- 
brake to the beach. There he saw Rob and Mr. 
Rogers, with Rob’s camera, taking pictures down 
among the cypress stumps, and Art busy at his trap. 
They all came back when they saw him. 

‘‘ Well, how do you feel ? ” the scout master asked. 
“ Kinder sore and stiff,” Peanut replied, with a 
grin. 

Mr. Rogers ran his hand over the boy’s forehead. 
“No temperature,” he said. “ Haven’t any inside 
pains, have you ? Any soreness in your chest ? ” 

142 


PEANUT AS A POLICEMAN 


143 


“No, sir, I feel good,” said Peanut, “only not 
just like going into a football game before to-mor- 
row.” 

“ That’s me, too,” laughed Art. Then he added, 
more soberly, “ Say, Mr. Rogers, now Peanut’s awake 
you ought to give us that dressing-down, though it’s 
me deserves it more’n he.” 

“ You talk as if you wanted a dressing-down. Art,” 
Mr. Rogers answered. “ But Fm going to disappoint 
you. I guess you had punishment enough last night. 
Now that we’ve got you safely back, Rob and I, 
maybe it’s not a bad thing for you to have learned 
that you can’t take any chances with the Dismal 
Swamp.” 

“ We’ve learned that all right,” said Art ; “ haven’t 
we. Peanut?” 

“ I knew that at two o’clock yesterday afternoon,” 
Peanut answered. ‘‘Say, I dreamed while I was 
asleep that we forgot to wind our watches last night. 
Gee, think if we had ! Where’d we be now ? ” 

“You’d be good and hungry,” said Rob. “I 
wish I’d taken your picture when we first found you, 
and then I could take one now, and label ’em ‘ Before 
and After.’ ” 

“ Come on and let’s take a picture of the Wash- 
ington Ditch, Rob,” said Art. “Just up it a way. 


144 boy scouts in THE DISMAL SWAMP 

You didn’t try one of that the other day. We ought 
to have it. Coming, Peanut ? ” 

Peanut looked irresolute. 

“ Better rest, if you’re still tired,” Mr. Rogers cau- 
tioned. “ Go back to the tents, and write up a log 
of your adventure.” 

“ Maybe I will,” said Peanut. “ I guess I will. 
Can I have your blank book, Art ? ” 

“ Sure thing.” 

The three walked away up the beach, and Peanut 
went back to the camp. He got Art’s blank book 
and turned beyond the pages where Art had set 
down rough sketches of the different kinds of tracks 
in the Swamp, and also where Art had written up 
the first two days of their trip. Coming to a fresh 
leaf, he began to write a story of their loss in the 
woods. Peanut was pretty good at compositions in 
school. He could always find words, so that this 
task didn’t take him very long. He lay back on 
the ground then, and looked up into the tall gum 
trees overhead. In one of them, out on a big branch 
fifty feet from the ground, he saw what looked at 
first like a large crow’s nest, but which on closer 
inspection turned out to be a cluster of green leaves 
on lighter colored stems. 

“ It must be mistletoe,” thought Peanut. 


PEANUT AS A POLICEMAN 


145 


Then he saw that a great rattan vine hung from 
this very limb. He got up, noticing as he did so 
that Art had for some, reason left his gun standing 
by the tent door, and went to the tree. The rattan 
vine grew from its base, curled around the trunk 
four or five times, and then seemed to reach out to 
the limb where the mistletoe was. This vine was 
an inch thick or more at the bottom. Peanut tested 
it. It was apparently strong as a hemp rope. He 
forgot his stiffness (which was mostly in his legs), 
took off his boots, and began to work his way up 
the vine, hand over hand. The vine swung out 
from the trunk, after the last spiral, but held firm 
above, and the boy, resting a moment before he 
deserted the slight footing afforded by the bark to 
his stocking feet, swung out with it and went up 
the last ten feet hand over hand, to the limb. He 
straddled this and got his breath. The vine went 
on up, turning around limb after limb. No danger 
of its giving way I Peanut wriggled out to the 
mistletoe, cut it off, and threw it down. Then he 
sat astride the limb, and looked out over the lake 
from this lofty perch. The afternoon sun was spark- 
ling on the dark water. Way off to the south lay 
the hazy green forest where he had so recently been 
lost. A turkey-buzzard was lazily aeroplaning up 


146 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

in the blue sky. It was a pleasant spot, and Peanut 
was in no hurry to come down. 

But suddenly he heard a crashing of footsteps in 
the forest not far to the north of him. 

“ That’s funny,” he thought ; “ the gang wouldn’t 
be coming back from the Ditch through the woods. 
Wonder if it’s a bear? Gee, bears climb trees 1 ” 

He clung firmer to the branch, and waited. 

The steps came nearer. Suddenly he saw the 
head and shoulders of a man through the under- 
growth, The man evidently saw the open light of 
the lake, for a kind of cry escaped him, and he hur- 
ried faster. A moment more, and he burst through 
the briers right into the camp. Another cry escaped 
him, and, as Peanut watched, he seemed at first in- 
clined to run away. But, as if satisfied that nobody 
was there, he didn’t run, but began poking around. 

Peanut’s first instinct was to call out. Then he 
reflected. “No,” he thought, “if he’s one of the 
Beasleys, he may shoot me. Maybe he’s just a 
poor guy lost, like we were. I’ll wait and see.” 

The man was evidently looking for food. He very 
soon found it, tore open a tin of potted ham, and 
began to devour it. But he kept looking about and 
listening, as if for the return of the campers. After 
be had eq^ten rayenou^l^ for a few moments, he 


PEANUT AS A POLICEMAN 


147 


pulled a blanket out of one of the tents, spread it in 
the open space by the fire, and began to pack some 
provisions into it. This was too much for Peanut. 

The boy as quietly as he could swung over the 
limb, and began to slide down the vine. He got to 
the trunk all right, but from there on it was hard 
work to descend noiselessly. However, the man 
was busy packing, and a breeze was rustling the 
foliage, so that Peanut landed undetected. Crouch- 
ing behind the trunk, he waited till the man^s back 
was turned, went on all fours to the tent, wriggled 
through, grabbed Art’s gun, cocked it, and got a 
bead. 

The man jumped at the click of the breech pin, 
and turned around to find himself looking into a 
little black hole, with a boy’s keen eye down the 
barrel above it. 

His hands went up in the air. ‘‘ I’m not armed, 
so help me, God !” he said. “You may search me.” 

“ I believe I will,” said Peanut. “ Take ofi your 
coat.” 

The man, who was young and good looking, 
though he needed a shave badly, took off a torn coat 
and tossed it toward Peanut, who kept one hand on 
the trigger, and felt in all the coat pockets with the 
other. 


148 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

“Now your pants,” said Peanut, “and keep your 
hands from the back of ’em. Slip your suspenders 
off your shoulders, and kick your pants off ! ” 

The man did so, and Peanut again felt in the 
pockets. There was nothing there except a jack- 
knife, which he put in his own pocket. 

“ Now you can put ’em on again,” the boy said. 
“I’m going to fire this gun to bring back the rest.” 

“ Oh, don’t do that I Let me go, let me go I ” 
the man pleaded. He was not like any thief or 
outlaw Peanut had ever imagined. His eyes filled 
with tears. He was almost crying as he pleaded. 

But Peanut looked at the blanket full of their good 
food, and he raised his gun, pointed it into one of the 
big '"gum trees, and fired three times. Then he 
ejected and cocked it again, with a quick motion, 
and once more pointed it at the stranger. 

“ Now you sit down and wait I ” he said. 

The man sat down, wearily, his head in his hands, 
as if nothing mattered now. Peanut pitied him — 
but kept his finger on the trigger. 

The man didn’t speak. Neither did Peanut. He 
wanted to, but he didn’t know how to begin. It 
grew rather uncomfortable sitting there saying noth- 
ing. Finally the boy could stand it no longer. 

“ Why’d you swipe our grub ? ” he blurted out. 


PEANUT AS A POLICEMAN 


149 


“ ^Cause I was starving,” the man replied. “ I 
guess you’d take some food if you were starving. 
I can’t pay you for it, because I haven’t any money. 
But just give me a pocket full of crackers and let me 
go 1 I’ve done nothing wrong, I swear to you, kid. 
They’re after me for something that ain’t my fault.” 

“What’s your name ? ” said Peanut. 

The man hesitated, and even as he was debating 
his answer Peanut heard the pound of footsteps on 
the beach, and the rest of the party burst through 
the cane-brake, and paused astonished at the sight of 
Peanut with the gun across his knees, pointed at the 
tattered, dejected figure of this stranger. 

The man seemed to shrink smaller at first sight of 
the others, till he was hardly more than a huddled 
heap. 


CHAPTER XV 


When Is It Right to Break the Law? 

M r. ROGERS was the first to speak. “Well, 
Peanut, what does this mean ? he asked. 
Peanut quickly told what had happened. 

“He hasn’t told me his name yet,” the boy fin- 
ished. “ I think he was going to just as you came.” 

Mr. Rogers walked over to the stranger and put a 
hand on his shoulder, not roughly but kindly. 

“ Look up at me,” he said. “ Come, you are 
hardly more than a boy yourself, are you ? What’s 
the trouble ? ” 

The young man looked up into the other’s face. 
“ I’m twenty-two,” he said. “ My name’s Robinson — 
Charles Robinson. I live in Norfolk, and worked 
for the railroad. That’s the truth, sir.” 

“ I believe you,” said the scout master. “ Now 
tell us what the trouble is. Come, Peanut, put up 
the rifle, we aren’t going to need it, and make Rob- 
inson some coffee.” 

Under the influence of this kindly treatment, Rob- 
inson sat up straighter and looked less afraid. Pea- 

150 


WHEN RIGHT TO BREAK THE LAW 15 1 

nut put the coffee-pot over the fire. Soon the poor 
man had a steaming cup of coffee in his hand, 
which he drank greedily. 

“ Art and I know how good that tastes, don’t we. 
Art?” said Peanut. 

“Now tell us why the police are after you,” said 
Mr. Rogers. “You must tell us the whole truth, 
too. You see, you are in our power, and we can be 
your judges if we want to.” 

“ I know, I know,” said the man. “ You are so 
kind to me I I wish you were my judges.” 

“ Well, what have you done ? ” 

“ Nothing,” Robinson answered, “ on my honor, 
nothing, except being poor. Looks sometimes as if 
that was a crime ! I got $12 a week wages in the 
railroad yards, and supported my mother and little 
sister. The kid was in school. I didn’t want her to 
go to work till she’d had a chance to learn some- 
thing. Twelve dollars a week ain’t much for three 
people, but we got on well enough till Ann came 
down with appendicitis. First we didn’t know 
what it was, and had a couple of doctors treating 
her for stomach troubles. That took all our spare 
change and more too. Then she got an acute 
attack, and had to be rushed to the hospital and 
operated on, and they discharged her in a week, I 


152 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

guess because they wanted the free bed for some- 
body else. Anyhow, it was too soon, and she was 
awful sick after we got her home, and we had to 
have more doctors, and there was no money to pay 
’em with.” 

“ I’ve heard of hospitals doing such things before,” 
said Mr. Rogers, grimly. “ Go on.” 

** Well, ma was worried about owing the doctors 
so much, and the druggist too, and I didn’t know 
what to do, so finally I went to a loan shark to 
borrow some money.” 

‘‘ What’s a loan shark ? ” asked Peanut. 

“ A loan shark is a man who lends money to poor 
people that haven’t got bank credit to borrow on, 
and charges an exorbitant rate of interest,” said the 
scout master. 

“ Like Shylock in the ‘ Merchant of Venice,’ ” said 
Rob. 

“ A loan shark is the devil,” said Robinson. 
“ This one — here, I’ll give you his name and 
address if you don’t believe my story — didn’t loan 
me money. That’s against the law. He bought 
my salary. That’s what the contract he made me 
sign said. That’s ^how he got around the law. I 
got $75 from him, and I had to pay him $7.50 a 
month interest, — that’s 120 % a year!” 


WHEN RIGHT TO BREAK THE LAW 153 

“ Whew ! ” whistled Rob. “ Some Shylock he 
was I ” 

“ Well, that was almost $2 a week out of my $12, 
and the drug and doctor’s bills still coming in, and 
me not paying back any of the principal, either. 
Finally, I got behind on my payments, only about 
$10 behind, — but he threatened me, and finally he 
got out some kind of a legal service on the railroad, 
about collecting my salary, which, you see. I’d sold 
to him. The railroad fired me. Oh, I don’t blame 
^kem / They can’t be bothered with legal suits over 
a $12 a week salary. So there I was deeper in debt 
than ever to this fiend, with no salary coming in.” 

“ Poor man,” said Peanut. 

“ Well, mother had to get sewing to do, though 
she was worn out nursing Ann. Thank God, Ann 
was getting well. While I was hunting a new job, 
the shark threatened to arrest me. I told him I 
couldn’t pay any more then, but he said I’d pay or 
go to jail. He meant it, too. They were coming 
for me when I beat it. One of the neighbors prom- 
ised to look after ma and Ann — poor little Ann ! — 
and I got down a back street and on to a train 
bound for West Virginia. Just as I was boarding 
her, though, another loan shark saw me ; he was in 
the depot. They all work together. I knew he’d 


154 boy scouts in THE DISMAL SWAMP 

tip off the other one, who’d telegraph ahead to have 
me pinched. That was yesterday afternoon. We 
slowed down in the Swamp between Norfolk and 
Suffolk, and I jumped off the rear of the train, and 
headed south. I thought maybe I could work 
’round to the canal and so get into North Carolina.” 

“Weren’t you afraid of getting lost in the 
Swamp ? ” asked Art. 

“ Sure I was, but I’d rather be lost here than lost 
in jail in Norfolk,” the man replied. “ I didn’t try 
to travel after it got dark. To-day I’ve been work- 
ing southeast by the sun. I’ve been using my 
watch as a compass. It’s a trick one of your boy 
scouts on my street taught me.” 

“ Some trick — it just saved two of us yesterday,” 
said Peanut. 

“ What would you do if you got to North Caro- 
lina?” asked Mr. Rogers. 

“ I’d get a job, and work on south to a city like 
Charleston, or Atlanta, Georgia, and find work 
there, maybe under another name, and send money 
home to Ann and mother,” the man replied. 

“ Got any money now ? ” asked the scout master. 

“ He had nothing but a jack-knife,” said Peanut, 
producing it — “ oh, and a dollar watch in his coat.” 

“ I gave my last cent to ma, all except the price 


WHEN RIGHT TO BREAK THE LAW 155 

of a railroad ticket out of the state — and of course 
that’s gone now,” Robinson answered. 

“ Hm,” said Mr. Rogers. “ I don’t believe this 
loan shark really can arrest you. If you had good 
legal counsel, I believe you could fight him, and 
have him arrested instead.” 

“ Hooray I ” cried Peanut. 

“ But I’ve got to pay the doctors before I could 
pay lawyers,” the poor man replied. 

“ Exactly,” said the scout master. “ Suppose you 
get out of the state, get a job, get on your feet, and 
then put a Norfolk lawyer on the job for you. That’s 
the thing for you to do. Lending money at 120% 
interest is against the law, I don’t care what kind 
of a salary sale dodge the shark puts up to get 
around it. But the first thing you’ve got to do is to 
get where you can earn some money, isn’t it ? ” 

Yes, sir,” answered Robinson. 

Mr. Rogers now turned to the three scouts. 
“ Boys,” he said, ‘‘ I’m going to put this up to you. 
This man admits that the police are after him. In 
other words, he’s broken a law, technically, anyhow, 
because he sold his salary, and now hasn’t any salary 
to deliver to the man who bought it. He’s sold what 
he hasn’t got. If we help him to escape, we are 
breaking the law, too. We are taking the law into 


156 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

our own hands. Our scout oath says we must obey 
our country’s laws. What are we going to do 
about it?” 

“ The scout oath says we must do our duty to our 
country,” said Rob. “ If this man hasn’t really so 
much broken the law as the loan shark w^ho’s going 
to have him arrested, maybe it’s our duty to let him 
get away. I think it’s horrible to put a man in jail 
just for not being able to pay 120% interest when 
he’s lost his job.” 

“ There’s another point, boys,” said the scout mas- 
ter. “ Maybe Robinson hasn’t been telling us the 
truth. Maybe he’s really a bank robber or a mur- 
derer.” 

Oh, no, no ! I swear to God I told you all the 
truth, and nothing but the truth ! ” cried the man. 

“ You hear what he says. It’s up to you,” said 
Mr. Rogers. 

“ It seems to me we’ve got to take a chance on 
that,” Rob commented. “ I don’t know just why, 
but I believe him. If we held him, and went over to 
the Cap’n’s, and telephoned to Norfolk, and then 
found he had told the truth, we’d be mighty sorry, I 
guess.” 

“ But there’d still be time for him to get away,” 
said Art. 


WHEN RIGHT TO BREAK THE LAW 157 

Yes, and we’d have given the tip where to look 
for him,” Peanut retorted. “They could find out 
where the call came from.” 

“ There’s another thing,” Art put in. “ How about 
his swiping our food and blanket ? ” 

“ Say,” cried Peanut, “ if we’d come on a camp 
with a blanket and food in it about last night, what 
would we have done ? ” 

“ Gee, I guess there’s something in that I ” said Art. 

“ Well, boys,” Mr. Rogers cut in, “ first of all, let’s 
decide whether we believe Robinson, or not. Those 
who believe he’s telling the truth, raise their right 
hands.” 

Three hands went up. 

“ Now, then, we believe him. That being settled, 
the question is, shall we be his judges and let him 
go, or shall we technically obey the laws and tele- 
phone Norfolk that we have him ? Those in favor of 
telephoning Norfolk raise their right hands.” 

The ragged Robinson looked anxiously at the 
three boys. There was silence. Not a hand went up. 

“ I guess we are lawbreakers with you, Robinson,” 
said Mr. Rogers. “ You get away ! ” 

The young man’s eyes filled with tears. “ Thank 
you, thank you, boys ! I’ll never forget this ! ” he said. 

“ Have another cup of coffee,” said Peanut. 


158 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

“ Now for ways and means,” said Mr. Rogers. 
“ First, I’m going to give you some money.” 

' “ Can’t we all chip in ? ” Rob suggested. “ I guess 
we can all spare fifty cents, anyhow. How about you, 
Peanut ? ” 

“Well I should worry I ” said Peanut, digging into 
his pocket. “ No 120^ interest on this, either! ” 

So the three boys contributed a dollar and a half, 
and Mr. Rogers eight and a half. “ This isn’t much,” 
he said to the grateful man, “ but we haven’t much 
here in the Swamp.” 

“No, we left the First National Bank at home,” 
said Peanut. “ It was rather heavy.” 

“Shut up. Peanut,” laughed Mr. Rogers. “But 
$10 will help you south, and you can get work. I’m 
sure. I’m going to give you my address on this 
piece of paper, and you must write to me very soon, 
and tell us how you are getting on. You must also 
give me your mother’s address now.” 

The man did so, and Mr. Rogers put it carefully 
into an inside pocket. “ Now,” he added, “ I’m 
going to give you the address of a good man I 
know in Atlanta, who runs the kind of a bank where 
a chap like you can go and borrow money at a fail- 
rate of interest. I want you to work your way to 
Atlanta and tell this man all about yourself, and let 


WHEN RIGHT TO BREAK THE LAW 159 


him help you. He’s been fighting loan sharks for 
years, and he’ll know just what to do. Promise 
me?” 

“ I do promise,” said Robinson. 

“Now, boys, supper!” cried the scout master. 
“ Then we’ll take Robinson up the Ditch and put 
him on his way.” 

The young man was now quite a different person 
from the hunted-dog looking object whom Peanut 
had seen sneaking into camp. He was cheerful 
now. He joked and chatted and asked all about 
the boy scouts, and helped get the supper. He 
helped eat it, too 1 

Supper cleared away, the boys packed him up 
some food in a box, and the canoe was hauled into 
the Ditch while daylight lasted. It was already 
dark in the shadows of the forest, however. The 
camp lantern was put up in the bow, in a white 
pasteboard cracker box, so that the light was all 
thrown ahead, out of the eyes of the paddlers. Art, 
as usual, took bow paddle, with his rifle beside him. 
Rob paddled at the stern. The other three curled 
up, in crowded quarters, in the bottom of the dug- 
out. The canoe glided ahead into the darkness, the 
candle lantern sending a frail shimmer up the black 
lane of water ahead. 


i6o BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


As they neared the end of the canal, Rob sug- 
gested that they ought to plan how to explain their 
presence. 

“That’s right. It is funny our coming way up 
the Ditch at night,” said Mr. Rogers. “ I tell you, 
there’s a store at Saunders, one mile south down the 
road. We’ll pretend our provisions have given out, 
and walk down there and buy some bacon.” 

A moment later, they shot out of the woods into 
the negro mammy’s clearing, and the mammy her- 
self appeared in her doorway, holding up a candle. 

“ Hello, Mammy,” called out Peanut. “ It’s only 
us. We-all gave you back your pig, so we’ve got 
to go up to the store to get some bacon.” [“ Got 
off that ‘ we-all ’ pretty neat,” he added in a whisper.] 

“Well, if it ain’t sho’ ’nuff de chil’ that was los’ in 
the cypress swamp ! ” exclaimed the old darkey. 
“You stick right by yo’ boat, honey,” she called 
out, “ an’ not go wanderin’ roun’ in the dark no mo’.” 

“That’s right, Mammy,” Mr. Rogers laughed. 
“I’m staying right with him now.” 

There was a general laugh at Peanut’s expense, 
and then they passed on, left the canoe, and walked 
out to the road. Turning south, they tramped along 
between the fields, with now and then a light gleam- 
ing from a farmhouse or cabin, till the lights of the 


WHEN RIGHT TO BREAK THE LAW i6i 


store appeared. Just before they reached the store 
a railroad track crossed the road. To their left they 
could see dimly a small station, hardly more than a 
freight shed. The store, close to the track on their 
right, was a primitive little white building, with a 
piazza roof over the entrance, but no piazza flooring, 
only the packed earth. Inside the only light was a 
kerosene lamp suspended from the ceiling, and most 
of the goods looked as if they had been there for 
years. A few negroes were loafing in the place. 

The boys asked for bacon, and bought four pounds. 
“ By the way,” Mr. Rogers asked the storekeeper, 
“ is there any train to Edenton, North Carolina, to- 
night? This road is the Norfolk and Southern, isn’t 
it ? One of our party was going over to the canal 
to-morrow to catch the boat down to Elizabeth City, 
but if he could get a train to-night, that would 
save him a whole day, and us another ten-mile pad- 
dle.” 

Thaf s why I’m keepin’ the store open,” the pro- 
prietor answered. “ They’ll be a train along soon, I 
reckon. Want I should flag it ? ” 

“ Thanks, if you will,” they replied. 

When the train came, the boys saw that it con- 
sisted of a string of freight cars and one passenger 
coach. They all .shook hands with Robinson, Mr, 


i 62 boy scouts in THE DISMAL SWAMP 


Rogers cried, “ Be sure to write to us I ” and the 
escaping fugitive climbed aboard. The train pulled 
out again. For a moment the fire pit was opened, 
and a gleam of red light shone on the smoke. Then 
the fireman closed the door, and they could only hear 
the train puffing off into the blackness of the Swamp 
to the south. The storekeeper was already putting 
up his shutters. 

“ He’s got away safe 1 ” whispered Peanut. 

The four campers hiked back up the sandy road 
in a darkness lit only by stars, stumbled down the 
lane to where their boat ought to have been, and 
hunted ten minutes before they found it. 

“ Say, this is dark ! ” said Art. ‘‘ I thought I had 
the spot fixed exactly.” 

They lit the lantern again, and paddled home. 
Peanut going fast asleep on the bottom of the canoe. 
Leaving the boat in the Ditch, they made their way 
through the dew-soaked rushes to the lake, which 
showed plainly now as the moon was rising, walked 
along the beach to camp, and started immediately 
to get ready for bunk — all save Peanut. He sud^ 
denly picked up the lantern and went behind the 
tents. 

“ Hi, where are you going with that light? ” yelled 
Art. ^ 


WHEN RIGHT TO BREAK THE LAW 163 

‘‘ Say, how can I see to find my night socks ? ” 
cried Rob. 

“ Whafs the matter with you, Peanut?” shouted 
Mr. Rogers. 

But Peanut only laughed, and they saw the lantern 
bobbing about close to the ground in the underbrush. 
Suddenly Peanut gave a cry, and came dashing 
back. 

He was holding a big bunch of mistletoe in his 
hand. 

** Gee, I just remembered this was what I went up 
the tree for this afternoon,” he said. ‘‘Mistletoe! 
It ought to be Christmas.” 

“What’s the good of mistletoe without any 
girls around?” said Art, crawling in under his 
blanket. 

“ Ho I Art wants a girl to kiss. Art wants a girl 
to kiss 1 ” Peanut shouted, thrusting the mistletoe 
into the tent and tickling his face. 

“ Aw, come to bed,” said Art. 

“All right,” laughed the other. “I’ll hang the 
mistletoe on the tent, so’s you can dream of Kitty 
Plummer.” 

A boot emerged from Art’s tent flap, and missed 
Peanut’s head by about an inch. 

“ Cut it. Peanut,” came Rob’s voice from the other 


i 64 boy scouts in THE DISMAL SWAMP 


tent. “You always get waked up at the wrong 
time.'' 

Peanut crawled in without another word, and mid- 
night silence settled down over the Lake of the Dis- 
mal Swamp, while the late moon rose over the wall 
of the forest. 


CHAPTER XVI 

Good-bye to the Wilderness 
HE morning dawned warm and clear. The 



-i- camp was early astir. Art, out first, shouted, 
“ Hi, wake up, it’s our last day in camp I ” and be- 
gan to beat lustily on the bottom of a kettle. 

The morning was so warm, in fact, that everybody 
went down to the lake before putting any clothes on, 
and splashed in the shoal water near shore. Then 
Art ran to his trap, emitted a shout that the rest 
could hear back in camp, and presently returned 
with his trap in his arms, and a poor, frightened 'coon 
inside of it. 

“ Going to have another delicious roast ’coon for 
dinner?” said Peanut. 

“ Quit your kiddin’,” Art retorted. ‘‘ This one 
really looks fatter, though, don’t you think so, Mr. 
Rogers?” 

Mr. Rogers took a look. “Yes, he really does, 
that’s a fact. But he’s not exactly plump, at that. 
Going to try him ? ” 


i66 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


‘‘ Aw, let the poor thing go,” said Peanut, peeping 
in at the frightened animal, which was huddled in a 
corner of the cage. “ Gee, it looks about as scared 
as Robinson did yesterday.” 

“ I don’t suppose I could take him and the ’pos- 
sum home very well, could I ? ” Art reflected. 

“ Sure, one in each pocket,” said Peanut. 

Why not open the cages right now,” put in Rob, 
and see what they’ll do ? ” 

“ I know what they’ll do — they’ll beat it,” Art re- 
plied. 

“ Well, let’s see ’em beat it.” 

Oh, all right,” said Art sadly. “ But I did want 
to take the ’possum home. You open the trap when 
I say three. Peanut.” 

Art stood by the ’possum’s cage, and Peanut by 
the trap. 

One, two, three / ” Art counted. 

The two lids were lifted, and two streaks emerged 
and vanished into the brush. The ’coon, however, 
went up the nearest gum tree, and disappeared into 
the branches. 

“Some loo yard dash men, they are!” cried 
Peanut. 

“If it had been a bear, I wouldn’t have let it go,” 
said Art. 


GOOD-BYE TO THE WILDERNESS 167 

“ Not till I was out on the lake, anyhow ! ” Peanut 
laughed. 

Poor Art,” said Rob, “ you haven’t even got a 
shot at a bear — only a pig. You’ll have to come 
again in the fall. George Parker told me he killed 
two bears right off our camp, on the shore, last 
November.” 

“ I am coming again,” Art replied, with decision. 

Breakfast was now eaten, and the canoe hauled 
for the last time from the Washington Ditch into the 
lake again. 

‘‘ Boys,” said Mr. Rogers, “ we have to take the 
steamer at Lynch’s Landing at six o’clock to-morrow 
morning. I think we ought to break camp here and 
camp to-night down by the big canal. Besides, how 
are we going to get the Cap’n’s dugout back to him ? 
We’d better take it back to the Cap’n this afternoon, 
and telephone for the launch to come up for us. 
Then we can camp to-night right by the landing.” 

“Then it’s good-bye to the Lake of the Dismal 
Swamp ! ” said Rob. “ Let’s row all the way around 
it this morning.” 

“ Right, O ! ” cried Peanut, “ and get a tan, too, to 
carry home.” 

It was, indeed, a real summer sun now high over 
the water. All four peeled down to their under- 


1 68 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


shirts above the waist line, and noticed for the first 
time that their faces and hands were already tanned. 

“ Feels kind o’ good on your shoulders,” said Art. 

They kept the dugout fairly close inshore, and 
made the circuit of the lake. When they got in 
among the cypresses at the northeast end Art sud- 
denly pointed ahead. 

“ What is it? I don’t see anything,” said Rob. 

“ Don’t you see another boat?” 

“ Well, I’ll be jiggered ! ” Rob exclaimed. “ So 
there is ! Talk about your protective coloring ! ” 

Sure enough, not two hundred yards away was a 
second dugout, with an old negro and two negro 
boys sitting in it fishing. It was painted gray to 
start with, and most of the paint had worn off, so 
that it looked exactly like one of the logs in the 
water. The skin of the negroes was almost invisible 
against the dark water of the lake, and they had on 
rusty brown shirts. As a result, the boys had come 
almost upon them without knowing they were there. 

“You’re right, Rob,” said the scout master. 
“That’s as good an illustration of protective coloring 
as I ever saw.” 

They hailed the fishermen, and found they had 
come from the Cap’n’s. 

“ How’d you get to the Cap’n’s ? ” asked Rob. 


GOOD-BYE TO THE WILDERNESS 169 

“We come up from the landing in a launch/’ the 
oldest fisherman replied. 

“ Got room enough to take four of us back this 
afternoon?” the boys asked. 

The fishermen said they had. 

“ Good, that’s settled,” said Mr. Rogers. “ Let’s 
go back to camp now and cook our final dinner.” 

Their boat moved on. It was noon now, and the 
sun was almost as hot as in midsummer back in the 
Berkshires* 

“ Look at Peanut’s shoulders,” cried Art. “ They 
look boiled.” 

“ You look like a lobster yourself,” the other re- 
torted. 

“ 1 don’t know how the rest of you feel,” Rob put 
in, “ but I feel lazy. It isn’t that I’m hot. I’m often 
hot in summer when I don’t feel lazy. But there 
seems to be something in the air that makes me feel 
like just lying around and doing nothing.” 

“I guess it’s the South,” Mr. Rogers answered. 
“ This is a premature summer day. My, it ought to 
bring out the snakes ! ” 

“Glad I ain’t in the cypress swamp, eh. Art?” 
said Peanut. 

“ Speaking of snakes ! ” Art answered, pointing to 
the beach as the boat grounded before camp. 


1 70 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

Sure enough, on the narrow strip of warm sand 
between the water and the cane-brake lay half coiled 
two big black and red water moccasins. 

“ Somebody else gets out first I ” cried Peanut. 

ril tackle a tiger or a polar bear, but I don’t like 
snakes and June bugs ! ” 

Art laughed, and stepped into the shoal water at 
the side of the canoe, gave the snakes a wide berth, 
and cut a pole with his hatchet. He trimmed it 
quickly into a club and came back. The rest sat in 
the canoe. 

Are you going to make me kill both of ’em?” he 
demanded. 

“ Cut me a pole, too, and I’ll help you,” laughed 
Rob. 

Art cut a second club, and the two boys drew near 
the snakes warily. The ^snakes, however, at their 
approach, didn’t rise to strike, but started for the 
water instead. Peanut gave an excited jump and 
nearly upset the canoe. The two boys brought their 
poles down and broke the backs of the moccasins, 
and then clubbed the life completely out of them. 

** A good job I ” cried Art. “ The fewer of those 
deadly things in the world the better.” 

He put his pole under one of them, and it dangled 
two feet on either side, the tail still wriggling 


GOOD-BYE TO THE WILDERNESS 171 

spasmodically, and curling up. Then he started 
toward the dugout with it. 

Peanut and Mr. Rogers got out of the boat. 

“ I believe Mr. Rogers is as scared of snakes as 
Peanut,” laughed Art. 

“ I am,” the scout master confessed. “ I wouldn’t 
touch a snake for $20.” 

‘‘ Gee, I’d even catch a June bug for $20 ! ” said 
Peanut. “ You’re scareder than I am ! ” 

Art made a pass at Peanut with the dangling 
snake, and Peanut emitted a yell and ran. 

“ Bury ’em. Art,” said the scout master. “ They’ll 
spoil my dinner.” 

Art laughed, dug a shallow hole in the sand, and 
covered the snakes up. I’d like a belt of the skins,” 
he said — if somebody else would skin ’em. Don’t 
suppose you would. Peanut ? ” 

“For $20,” Peanut replied. 

Dinner was now cooked — a good, big dinner, for 
they had plenty of provisions left, beside the bacon 
they had been forced to buy the night before, and 
then they struck camp, burned up all debris, rolled 
up the tents, packed enough provisions for supper 
and breakfast, and made a bundle of the rest to give 
to Cap’n Jack. The dugout was loaded, ready for 
the start. 


172 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

“ And now it’s good-bye ! ” said Rob. “ Golly, I 
hate to go ! ” 

Art shouldered his gun. “I’m going for a last 
hike along the shore — ^just down to the cypresses,” 
he said. 

“ I’m going just to sit here in the sun and watch 
the lake,” said Rob. 

“ Me, too,” said Peanut. 

“ I’m with the majority,” said Mr. Rogers. 

So Art went off alone, while the rest sat on the 
warm sand, under the shade of the trees, and lazily 
watched the silent waters of Lake Drummond, 
watched the turkey-buzzards sailing in great circles 
overhead, and heard the sleepy rustle of the breeze 
in the great forest trees. 

Presently they heard Art’s gun crack, once, twice. 

“ Wonder what he’s got ? ” said Rob. 

“ I don’t wonder so hard that I can’t wait,” laughed 
Peanut, as he lay on his back with his eyes half shut. 

Presently Art returned. He had another small 
’coon. 

“ Well, you are a lazy lot ! ” he sniffed. “ Spend- 
ing your last hours in camp half asleep ! Look what 
I got, on the second shot — way up a gum tree he 
was, too. Going to give him to the Cap’n. Come 
on, you gang of loafers — it’s getting late.” 


GOOD-BYE TO THE WILDERNESS 173 

Rob slowly got up. “ You are a mighty hunter, 
Art,” he said. “ But we are poets. We were en- 
joying the beauties of Nature.” 

“ Nature, your grandmother ! ” said Art. “ You 
were all asleep.” 

“ No, we weren’t,” Peanut answered. “ But it’s 
kinder hot and comfortable and tropic-y here to- 
day.” 

‘‘ Exactly, Art,” said Mr. Rogers. We feel like 
the old Yankee in the story, who was always in the 
village store, by the stove. ‘Sometimes I set an’ 
think,’ he said, ‘ an’ sometimes I jest set' We were 
‘ jest settin’.’ ” 

Art laughed. “ But it’s time we dug out,” he an- 
swered. 

“ Time we dug out in the dugout — that’s a joke, 
gents ! ” cried Peanut, getting aboard, and taking 
the stern paddle. 

He found no trouble in spotting the outlet this 
time, for the scout sign in the cypress tree was vis- 
ible half a mile from shore. The boys laid down 
their oars and paddles as the boat passed between 
the sentinel cypresses, and ran into the black lane 
between the bleached gray bones. 

“ Let’s have a last look at Lake Drummond ! ” 
said Art. 


174 boy scouts in THE DISMAL SWAMP 

A haze hung over the water, for the sun was still 
hot, and the farther shore was almost invisible. Not 
a human being was in sight, and not any living 
creature except two turkey-buzzards aeroplaning 
over the water. The breeze had died down with the 
declination of the sun, and there was not even a 
rustle from the forest wall to break the silence. 

“ Pretty lonely place,” said Peanut, softly, “ but I 
hate to leave it.” 

“ I’m coming back,” said Art, “ to get a bear.” 

The boat now shot into the shadows of the outlet 
canal, and in a few moments was before the Cap’n’s 
clearing. On the locks the negroes were already 
waiting for them. 

The boys gave the Cap’n their excess provisions 
and Art’s ’coon, paid for the dugout, and returned 
the borrowed saw. Cap’n Jack thanked them pro- 
fusely, and came hobbling with them as they toted 
their luggage down to the launch. 

“ Look out for the sheriffs I ” Peanut sang out, as 
the launch got under way. 

“ They warn’t no gentlemen, no, sah ! Cornin’ to 
a man’s house at night an’ never say in’ a single 
word ! I don’ countenance no murder, but I hope 
they ” 

Cap’n Jack’s voice followed them down-stream. 


GOOD-BYE TO THE WILDERNESS 175 

till it was lost. Peanut laughed. “ The Cap’n will 
be saying, ‘ They warn’t no gentlemen, no, sah,* 
when you come back for your bear in the fall. Art ! ” 
he said. 

They were at Lynches Landing in less than an 
hour, just in time to see the Nita come in from Nor- 
folk, leave her cargo, and steam on south down the 
canal. She would be back for them at six o’clock in 
the morning. 

“ And if you lazy loafers are going to get her,” 
said Art, “ I guess we’d better camp right on the 
dock I” 

They did, in fact, make camp in a bit of woods 
close to the dock, and after supper walked east up 
the road for a mile, between fields of young onion 
sets, to the village of Wallaceton, a cluster of houses 
around a big sawmill, where the cypress logs were 
sawed up into lumber and shingles. There was a 
store in Wallaceton, which Peanut investigated for 
candy ; but the stock didn’t tempt even his sweet 
tooth, and the party soon returned to camp and bed 
on the bare ground, which was none too comfortable, 
as all four of them had blistered shoulders from 
rowing all the morning in their undershirts. 

Art, as usual, was their alarm clock in the morn- 
ing, and he got them to the landing, bag and bag- 


176 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


gage, ten minutes before the boat came. At half- 
past ten they were back again in Norfolk, with the 
rest of the day to killj for the New York boat did 
not sail till seven o’clock. 


CHAPTER XVII 
Peanut’s Heart is Hit 

T KNOW one thing we could do before the boat 

A comes,” said Rob. “We could look up Robin- 
son’s mother and sister, and find out if he was telling 
us the truth.” 

“ A good idea ; come on,” cried the scout master. 

They checked their baggage at the Old Dominion 
Pier, and set out to find the address Robinson had 
given them. 

“ Seems funny to be walking on pavements,” said 
Peanut. 

“ Seems funnier to see so many people,” said Art. 
“ I don’t feel as if I had room enough here.” 

“ Take the middle of the street ! ” Peanut sug- 
gested. 

After walking a mile or more, they found the 
street Robinson had told them, and then the house. 
It was a poor, shabby, little wooden house. In 
answer to their knock, however, a very pretty, 
golden-haired girl opened the door. Peanut was 
177 


1 78 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

standing nearest, and she smiled sweetly into his 
face, as much as to say, What can I do for 
you?^’ 

Peanut turned red. He shuffled from one foot to 
the other, started to speak, failed, wet his lips, and 
tried again. ‘‘ D-does Mrs. Robinson live here ? ” 
he asked, finally. 

“Yes, won’t you-all come in?” the girl replied. 

They stepped in. 

“ Gee, I never saw Peanut rattled by a girl be- 
fore,” Art whispered to Rob. “ She’s a peach, 
though ! ” 

When the girl had gone to get her mother poor 
Peanut was in for it. 

“Guess you wish it had been the sister you 
arrested ! ” said Rob. 

“ Hm I He wouldn’t have fired to bring ms back 
if it had been 1 ” said Art. 

Just then the girl returned with her mother, a 
small, pale woman, who looked troubled. 

“ Now, boys, let me talk,” Mr. Rogers cautioned. 

“ Mrs. Robinson,” the scout master said, “ first 
let me tell you who we are, and assure you that our 
errand is most friendly. We are boy scouts from 
up North, and we’ve been camping for a week in 
the Dismal Swamp. While we were there a 


PEANUTS HEART IS HIT 


179 

man came through who said his name was Robin- 
son 

Charlie ! ” exclaimed the woman and the girl in 
one breath. “A young man, medium height, fair 
hair — almost a boy ? ” the mother added, tears in 
her eyes. “ Oh, is he all right ? ” 

The boys all nodded “ yes.^^ 

“ He told us a story of why he was there,’^ Mr. 
Rogers continued gravely, “ and on the strength of 
that story, we helped him get into North Carolina.^ ^ 
“ Bless you, bless you ! ” said the woman. 

‘‘ Now, we believed that story,^^ Mr. Rogers went 
on. “We believed it, or we wouldn^t have helped 
your son. But we^d like to hear it from your lips, 
too, just as a matter of confirmation.^^ 

“ I don’t know what Charlie told you,” the woman 
said, “ but I can’t believe it was anything but the 
truth. He never did a wrong thing in his life, only 
a foolish one. He borrowed money from one of 
those terrible loan sharks, because we had so much 
sickness, and doctors’ bills to pay, and then he lost 
his job at the railroad because the shark garnished 
his salary when he couldn’t pay all the interest, and 
finally the shark was going to have him arrested, so 
he ran away rather than that. I didn’t want him to 
run away, but he would do it. He said he’d die be- 


i8o BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


fore he went to jail for a crime that wasn’t a crime 
at all.” 

“Hooray!” cried Peanut, impulsively, “it’s all 
true 1 ” 

The girl shot a quick look of gratitude at the 
speaker, and Peanut immediately became red again. 

“ The shark was going to try to carry off all my fur- 
niture, he was so mad,” Mrs. Robinson went on, 
“ but one of the neighbors got a lawyer and stopped 
that. You see, the sharks depend on people being 
too poor to have lawyers. That’s how they fatten 
on misery.” 

“ Well, your son ought to be out of the state by 
now, and working his way to Atlanta,” Mr. Rogers 
said. “ Don’t tell anybody you’ve heard from him. 
I’ve sent him to a man in Atlanta who will help him, 
and before very long I guess you will be reunited. 
We are glad to have been of some slight assistance.” 

“ Oh, how can I ever thank you, and you total 
strangers, too, from way up North!” the woman 
cried. Her eyes were full of tears, and she kissed 
all three boys, one after the other, ending with 
Peanut. 

[“ Don’t you wish Ann would do that, too ? ” 
whispered Art in Peanut’s ear.] 

Ann didn’t, however, but she came to the door 


PEANUT’S HEART IS HIT i8i 

with them, and shook hands very prettily, saying, 
“ Thank you ! ” to all but Peanut. She didn’t say 
anything to him, and he could think of nothing to 
say to her ; but they just stood and looked at each 
other a long moment, and grew rosy, and suddenly 
dropped hands and turned away. 

Down in the street Art giggled. “ You made a 
sure enough hit with the peach, Peanut,” he said. 

Peanut said nothing. He was looking back 
toward the house. There was a face in the window, 
and a little hand waved him farewell. 

“ Cut it out. Art,” Mr. Rogers whispered. “ Let 
Peanut have his romance in peace.” 

They walked a block in silence. Then Rob spoke. 

“ Do you know,” he said, “ I think finding out 
that Robinson’s story was really true is almost the 
best part of our trip.” 

“ Me, too 1 ” cried Peanut. 


CHAPTER XVIII 
The Boys See “Julius Caesar'’ 


FTER lunch at a restaurant, the party crossed 



the harbor on the ferry to the smaller city of 
Portsmouth, and visited the Navy Yard, where they 
saw two or three of the great gray battle-ships, get- 
ting up at close range to them as they were moored to 
the docks. Just as they arrived, signal practice was 
going on. A sailor stationed on the bridge of the 
Massachusetts was sending to another sailor on the 
bridge of the West Virginiay three hundred yards or 
so away. 

The boys watched a moment in amazement. 

“ Whew I ” said Peanut. “ That makes our speed 
limit look like a funeral procession.” 

“ With oxen drawing the hearse ! ” added Rob. 

The sender, indeed, was signaling so fast that the 
boys couldn’t read it, they lost so many letters. Yet 
the man on the West Virginia seemed to be having 
no trouble at all, and was wigwagging back his 
answers at an equal rate of speed. 


THE BOYS SEE “JULIUS C^SAR’^ 183 

“I guess we’re not ready for the signal corps 
yet,” Peanut sighed. 

Beyond the big fighting ships, beside one of the 
machine shops, they found six of the new fourteen- 
inch guns, ready to be hoisted aboard ship and 
mounted in the turrets. None of the boys had ever 
seen one before, and they walked about the huge 
things for half an hour, marveling at their great 
length and enormous weight. Then, coming out to 
the gate of the Yard, they walked around the little 
park there, and saw the various cannon which are 
kept beside the paths as souvenirs of the War of 
1812, of the Revolution, and even of earlier days. 
The contrast between the ships’ cannon of a hundred 
years ago and of to-day was so great that it was 
almost funny. 

“ Why,” said Peanut, “ it’s as big a difference as 
between a New York skyscraper and my dad’s 
chicken coop I ” 

“Just one shell from those fourteen-inch guns 
over there would smash the old Constitution into 
kindling wood,” Art remarked. 

“ I suppose so,” said Peanut, “ but just the 
same the Constitution was a great little old 
ship ! ” 

“She did her work in her day, didn’t she?” 


i 84 boy scouts in THE DISMAL SWAMP 

laughed the scout master. “ That’s all that can be 
expected of any of us.” 

“ She did more’n that,” said Peanut. “ Old Iron- 
sides did about six ships’ work, I guess.” 

The party got back to Norfolk at six, and went 
aboard the steamer for dinner. 

“ I’m going to eat just as if I was going to keep it 
all 1 ” Peanut announced. 

“ Maybe you will,” Art encouraged. 

As a matter of fact, he did. The party sat on deck 
while the steamer ran out eastward along Lynnhaven 
Roads, leaving the lights of Old Point Comfort 
farther and farther behind, and when the boat began 
to head north beyond Cape Charles light, Rob and 
Peanut waited an awful ten minutes for the roll to 
commence. But it didn’t commence. The sea was 
as calm as Lake Drummond, the night was warm, 
and the boys didn’t turn in till midnight. 

The weather held fair the next morning, though it 
was cooler up off the Jersey coast. They sat all 
the morning on the port side of the ship, and 
watched the low-lying Jersey coast slip out astern, 
just visible on the horizon. Finally, after lunch, the 
Highlands appeared, they turned in around Sandy 
Hook, passed through the Narrows between Brook- 
lyn and Staten Island, and saw the great pile of sky- 


THE BOYS SEE “JULIUS C^SAR'’ 185 

scrapers on lower Manhattan rising out of the 
water. 

“ It looks like a mountain range ! ” said Rob. 
“New York must certainly surprise the immigrants 
coming up the bay for the first time.’^ 

It was three o’clock Saturday afternoon when they 
landed, checked their baggage for the Grand Central 
station, and took a car to the artist’s studio where 
they had left their clothes. That strange being was 
working hard, when they arrived, on a huge canvas 
for a state Capitol out West. He had a real Indian 
posed in full war paint on a little platform in front of 
him. The Indian’s eyes turned in their sockets and 
watched the boys as they entered the studio, but his 
head never moved, nor did a muscle of his face 
change its position. 

“Well, God bless me, if here aren’t the three 
musketeers ! ” cried the big artist, brandishing his 
brush. “ Welcome once more to our city ! ” 

The boys laughed. 

“ I suppose,” he added, “ that you desire to doff 
the garb of Nimrod now, and to don habiliments 
more suited to our urban conventions.” 

“ If you mean, would we like to change our clothes, 
we would,” said Peanut. 

“ Go to it, brave Atom,” cried the artist, with a 


i86 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


big, bass laugh. ‘‘ Your doublet and hose and eke 
your sandal shoon are still behind yon door.” 

“ Gee, he’s full of words ! ” said Peanut, with a 
wink. 

The artist pretended great rage, and glowered at 
Peanut over his black beard. 

“ I eat the dictionary every day for lunch,” he 
thundered. 

The boys were soon in their ordinary clothes 
again, with their tattered scout togs packed in their 
bags. They looked at each other’s faces, rising 
tanned above unaccustomed white collars, and 
laughed. 

“ Peanut, your nose is peeling,” said Art. 

“ Don’t mind my nose, but I wish my shoulders 
weren’t,” the other replied, wriggling uncomfortably. 

Rob ran his fingers ’round inside his collar. 
“ Funny how big your neck gets in a week, when 
you haven’t worn a collar,” he said. ” This bloom- 
ing thing chokes me.” 

“ Gee, and Monday we’ll all be sitting in school 
again I ” sighed Peanut. 

“ Well,” laughed Mr. Rogers, who was dressed up 
himself by now, “ we’ll have a fling to-night at the 
Gay White Way, anyhow I ” 

“ What’s that? ” asked Art. 


THE BOYS SEE “JULIUS C^SAR” 187 

“You poor Rube,” sniffed Peanut, “that’s where 
all the theatres are.” 

The four now departed, leaving the artist to finish 
his day’s work, with an agreement to join him for 
dinner. They got on top of a Fifth Avenue ’bus 
in Washington Square, and rode up the crowded, 
gay avenue, then across town past a corner 
of Central Park, so on up Riverside Drive, where 
the boys had their first glimpse of the Palisades of 
the Hudson, rising steep and level across the wide 
river. There was an endless roll of motors along 
the Drive, the river was blue, the sky still bluer, 
all the spring hats of the women were gay with color. 
New York was at its very best that late May after- 
noon. 

“ I think I’ll stay here,” said Peanut. “ You-all 
can go back to Southmead and tell teacher I’m go- 
ing into partnership with J. P. Morgan, yass, sah.” 

“ You’d better come back and get a decent mark 
in bookkeeping first” said Art. 

Peanut, for once, had no reply I 

They met the big artist at seven o’clock, at a funny 
restaurant down-town, where three or four men who 
looked like gypsies and were dressed in red coats, 
sat in the corner and played loud, lively music. The 
artist ordered the dinner, which was too highly spiced 


i88 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


to please the boys, though they were too polite to 
say so. But they were hungry enough to eat it. 
Peanut, however, seemed to be having a hard time. 
Once he choked. 

“What’s the matter. Atom?” asked the artist. 

“ It’s the music,” said Peanut. “ Gee, I try to 
keep up with it, and I can’t. They ought to give us 
turkey to eat to that turkey trot.” 

The artist roared with mirth. “ Don’t like music 
with your meals, eh? You shouldn’t have such 
musical jaws.” 

“ Maybe if they’d play a hymn,” said Peanut, “ I 
could get this meat chewed slow enough.” 

“ They’d have to play a funeral march for Art’s 
’coon, then,” said Rob. 

But Peanut’s meat disappeared from his plate, all 
right, music or no music, and so did the ice-cream 
which followed. After dinner the party walked to 
Broadway, in search of a theatre. As they came 
into Madison Square, the boys saw the great il- 
lumined clock half-way up the face of the white Metro- 
politan tower. Then, turning north, they saw the 
beginning of the Gay White Way, a long line of 
lights made by every kind and shape of electric sign 
up the fronts of the buildings and even high on their 
roofs. 


THE BOYS SEE ‘‘JULIUS C^SAR” 189 

Up this lane the party walked, meeting an inces- 
sant stream of pedestrians on the curb, an incessant 
stream of taxicabs, motors and cars in the street. 
They passed theatres, motion picture houses, three 
great hotels (one of them more than twenty stories 
high), looked down through the plate glass windows 
of the Herald Building and saw the giant presses 
revolving and throwing out Sunday papers, saw 
just beyond the Herald Building a huge electric 
sign on a roof, which depicted in incandescent out- 
line a chariot race, passed more threatres, and finally 
came out into Times Square, where there were so 
many electric signs on all sides that, as Peanut put 
it, “ you could hardly see the night.” 

“I guess it’s about time now for us to pick a 
play,” Mr. Rogers remarked. “What shall it be, 
boys ? ” 

“ We might count out,” Art laughed ; “ that’s the 
only way I could pick. 

** * Eeny, meeny, rainy, raoe. 

Catch a theatre by the toe ! ’ ” 

Peanut, who had been taking everything in, now 
peeped down a side street, and gave a cry. 

“ Look ! ” he said, “ there’s a sign which says 
‘ Julius Caesar.’ Let’s go to ‘ Julius Caesar.’ ” 


190 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

‘‘The Atom wants Shakespeare!” roared the big 
artist. 

“Sure,” grinned Peanut, a little abashed, “it’s 
some play, believe me, Mr. Dictionary. You 
oughter read it.” 

The laugh was now on the artist. 

As Rob and Art, also, were both eager to see the 
play they had been reading in school, the party 
made at once for the theatre. They secured fairly 
good seats up in the first balcony, and got to their 
places in time to see the curtain rise. From then on 
three pairs of eyes were glued on the stage, and 
three excited scouts discussed the play between acts. 
William Faversham was playing Antony, and at first 
the boys didn’t quite like him, because they thought 
he didn’t look old enough. 

“But Antony was a young man,” urged Mr. 
Rogers. 

“ He looked older in the pictures, though,” said 
Peanut. 

“ Did it ever occur to you, Atom,” said the artist, 
“ that the men who made those pictures never saw 
Antony?” 

It never had, so Peanut could find no reply. 

After the assassination scene, however, and the 
entrance of Antony to weep over the body of Caesar, 


THE BOYS SEE “JULIUS C^SAR’’ 191 

the boys forgot all about his youth ; and when the 
Forum scene began they got almost out of their 
chairs with eagerness. They watched the Roman 
mob swayed over to Brutus’s side by Brutus’s speech, 
and then swayed back again by Antony’s. Pea- 
nut’s lips were going silently. He was repeating the 
big speech as Antony spoke it. When the curtain 
finally came down on the cheering mob rushing off 
to avenge Caesar, Peanut leaned back, his eyes shin- 
ing, too excited even to applaud. 

“ That’s some scene ! ” he finally managed to gasp. 
“ Gee, I wish we could see all the Shakespeare plays 
actedy before we read ’em in school I They wouldn’t 
seem so dull then.” 

“ That’s right, Atom,” said the artist. “ Funny 
thing, but when Shakespeare wrote ’em, do you 
know he wrote ’em to be acted. He never dreamed 
they would be studied in class rooms. I dare say he 
didn’t even know there was going to be a South- 
mead High School.” 

“ Well, I’m glad we’ve seen this one, anyhow,” 
said Rob, philosophically. 

That night, after the play, the boys bunked as best 
they could in the studio, Rob and Peanut on a big 
couch, and Art rolled up in a blanket on a pile of 
cushions on the floor. The scout master slept with 


192 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

the artist. They were up early, and had a regular 
camp breakfast in the studio, using a gas stove for a 
camp-fire. The artist shook hands with a mighty grip, 
slapped Atom ” resoundingly on one of his sun- 
burned shoulders, and shouted, “ Good-bye, me brave 
musketeers ! ” down the corridor as they parted. 

“ I like old Dictionary ! ” laughed Peanut. “ He’d 
be a good one on a hike.” 

The train was rolling up through Connecticut 
when Peanut suddenly wheeled in his seat. “ Say,” 
he cried, ‘‘ it’s just struck me I You know that Indian 
gink in the poem, who ‘hollowed a boat of the 
birchen bark,’ and went chasing the will-o’-the-wisp 
over the Lake of the Dismal Swamp?” 

“Yes,” said Art and Mr. Rogers. “What about 
him?” 

“ Well, what beats me is, where did he find the 
birch trees in the Swamp 

Mr. Rogers laughed. “ By Jove, that’s right, 
Peanut,” he cried. “ And I never thought of it be- 
fore! Well, you see Tom Moore never went to the 
Swamp himself, but he’d read that Indians had birch 
bark canoes. He just didn’t know.” 

“ Well, it’s some poem, anyway,” said Peanut, 
“ but I guess what he hollowed was a cypress dug- 
out, yass, sah I ” 


THE BOYS SEE “JULIUS C^SAR” 193 

“ Ah reckon yo’ is right,” laughed Art, trying to 
talk like a darkey, too. 

At one o’clock they once more stood on the plat- 
form at Southmead, and fifteen minutes later they 
were eating Sunday dinner with their families, and 
trying to tell their adventures between bites. 


CHAPTER XIX 

Telling About the Trip 

R ob, I am afraid we must confess, began devel- 
oping his pictures that very Sunday afternoon. 
He couldn’t wait till Monday to see how they came 
out. He spent the next two or three afternoons 
printing them, and by Thursday night he was ready 
for the scout meeting. 

“ Everybody come I ” announced Peanut in school. 
“ Old Burton Holmes Rob will give his famous trav- 
elogue on the Dismal Swamp, with one of the best 
lantern slide operators in the business to assist him.” 
“Who’s that?” asked Prattie, innocently. 

“ I blush to tell you,” the other replied, “ but his 
friends call him Peanut.” 

Rob brought his radiopticon to the Scout House in 
the afternoon, and Peanut brought a sheet. The 
radiopticon is a comparatively simple machine con- 
taining two strong electric lights and a lens like a 
magic lantern. The difference is that the lights, in- 
stead of shining through a glass slide with the pic- 
ture photographed on it, send out the magnified re- 
flection of an ordinary picture post-card or photo- 
194 


TELLING ABOUT THE TRIP 


195 


graph. The machine doesn't cost much, and all you 
need are some photographs, and an electric light at- 
tachment in your room. Rob fastened the cord of 
the machine to one of the electric light fixtures at 
one end of the Scout House, and Peanut hung up 
the sheet at the other. The machine was placed on 
a table, and the few chairs the Scout House boasted 
placed between. 

“ Now we’re ready,” said Rob. You put the pic- 
tures in just as they come to-night. Peanut. I’ll have 
’em stacked in order. I’ll stand down by the sheet 
with a pointer, and lecture ! ” 

The house was full that evening, and Rob took his 
place before the sheet, signaling to Art to put out the 
lights. The lights went out — all but the white spot 
from the radiopticon on the sheet. 

“Ladies and gentlemen ” began Rob. 

“ Who’s a lady?” came half a dozen voices. 

Rob laughed, and began again. “ Fellow scouts, 
I’m going to show you some of the things Mr. Rogers 
and Art and Peanut and I saw down in the Dismal 
Swamp of Virginia,” Rob commenced. “ We had a 
bully time, and I wish more of you had been along. 
But before we took the boat for Norfolk, Virginia, we 
had half a day in New York and saw the big buildings 
there. First I’ll show you some of the buildings.” 


196 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


He tapped with his stick on the floor, and Peanut 
put the first picture into the radiopticon — a picture 
post-card of the Singer tower. After showing a few 
more New York views, Rob said, “Now we’ll have 
a picture of the boat we went on. That will make 
Peanut real happy.” 

The boys laughed. 

“ I didn’t notice you were eating so much mince 
pie yourself ! ” called Peanut, as he put the picture in. 

“ You were both eating backward,” laughed Art. 

From this point on, Rob showed picture after 
picture, of the canal, the cypresses, Cap’ n Jack, the 
rest of the party in the dugout, the Washington 
Ditch, Art’s ’possum in the cage, the camp, and so 
on. With the pictures before them on the screen, 
the scouts were able to follow Rob’s description of 
the trip pretty well, and get an idea of what it had 
been like. Rob saved for the last picture one he 
had taken from the boat, of the marker they set up 
on the cypress by the feeder — the white sign reading : 


SOUTHMEAD BOY SCOUTS 
Troop i 
May /p, 1^12 

“ That sign we left down in the heart of the Dis- 


TELLING ABOUT THE TRIP 


197 


mal Swamp,” he said, “for everybody to see- — five 
hundred miles from home ! That’s the Southmead 
Boy Scout record to date, boys. Who’s going to 
beat it ? ” 

Rob sat down, Art switched up the lights, and the 
Scout House shook with the applause and stamping. 

“ Good work, Rob,” said Joe Donovan, one of the 
older scouts. “ Somebody ought to have a camera 
on every hike. My ! that, and the radiopticon, make 
it interesing for all of us who had to stay at home.” 

“ Stay at home ! That’s it I ” cried Peanut. “ Gee, 
you fellers make me tired ! Just because you 
wouldn’t save up some money, and do a little extra 
work in school ! We saw the Dismal Swamp, and 
had a great time there, and we saw New York, and 
‘Julius Caesar,’ and ” 

“ And Ann Robinson,” put in Art. 

“Aw, cut that out!” cried Peanut, turning red. 
“ I tell you, fellers, we learned more in a week, I 
guess, than you’ll learn in a month of school. You’re 
a big bunch of its.” 

Some of the boys, maybe, thought they were, now 
that they had heard the fun that Peanut, Art and 
Rob had enjoyed. 

“Well, I’m going to save up, too, this summer, 
and go somewhere,” declared Joe Donovan. “ I’m 


198 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

through school, but I guess I can still take a vaca- 
tion.” < 

“ Come on back with me to the Swamp in Novem- 
ber, and get a bear I ” said Art. 

“ Do you mean it?” 

“ Sure, I mean it,” Art declared. “ Til never be 
happy till I’ve got a bear.” 

“ ‘ It’s a bear, it’s a bear, it’s a bear ! ’ ” sang Pea- 
nut, as he swung up again upon the trapeze, where 
the Great Idea had first come to him. 


CHAPTER XX 

Something New for Scout Work 

T3UT while we are waiting for the autumn to 
-L' come, we might as well tell what the South- 
mead scouts did — or one of the things they did— 
during the summer. One of the boys, most likely 
it was Rob, read in a magazine about the Black 
Forest of Germany, where there are well marked 
trails leading for miles and miles through the woods 
and mountains, and where thousands of Germans 
tramp for their vacations. Some of the boys had 
also heard of the Appalachian Club of Boston, which 
keeps the trails cut out and marked over the White 
Mountains of New Hampshire. 

“ And,” said Rob, “ why shouldn’t the boy scouts 
of Berkshire keep our trails marked ? Here we have 
a lot of fine mountains all around us, and woods, 
too, but nobody can find the trails if he doesn’t know 
his way pretty well, and nobody except us ever 
climbs the mountains. We ought to blaze out some 
of the trails, and mark ’em with scout signs. Maybe 
p)ore people would hike over ’em if we didr’’ 

m 


200 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


The other scouts fell in with the idea, and it was 
decided to begin with Burgoyne’s Pass, a defile in a 
mountain close to Southmead up which tradition 
said the Americans had marched some of General 
Burgoyne’s captured soldiers after the battle of Sara- 
toga. Nobody, to be sure, had ever been able to 
find an authentic record that the soldiers were 
marched up over the mountain instead of around 
by the road, but the pass was a beautiful spot, any- 
how, and made a fine afternoon’s walk. The path 
up it, however, was overgrown and blind. Half a 
dozen wood roads led off from it in various direc- 
tions, and any one of them was likely to lead the 
tramper astray. So one Saturday in June a dozen 
scouts set out to mark the trail. 

First they made six or eight wooden arrows, a 
foot long, and marked them with red paint, thus : 

r \ 

f Scouts Burcoyne's Pass 
/ America 

These they took along with some nails. They had 
their hatchets, of course. The first arrow they put 
on a tree at the entrance of the trail into the woods. 
Others they put on trees where the wood roads led 



SOMETHING NEW FOR SCOUT WORK 201 


off blindly. Where there was less danger of missing 
the trail, they merely cut blazes on the trees. 

Put the blazes on both sides,” cautioned Art, 
“ so people coming through the other way can 
see ’em.” 

When they reached the top of the pass, they saw 
a wood road leading off sharply to the south, and 
apparently running along the ridge of the mountain. 
It was badly overgrown with brush. 

“ Boys,” said Rob, “I’ll bet that old wood road 
leads ten miles south along the whole ridge. If it 
was cleared out, it would make a grand day’s walk. 
We could find where it comes down the mountain at 
the far end, and make a fine all day hike of it, com- 
ing home up the other side of the valley.” 

“ Gee, let’s do it to-day ! ” cried Peanut. 

“ Without any lunch ? ” said Prattie, who was 
along. “ Excuse me ! ” 

“ Prattle’s right for once,” laughed Art. “ We’ll do 
that Saturday. Let’s finish Burgoyne’s Pass now.” 

The Pass trail now began to go down the moun- 
tain on the farther side. It came out suddenly into 
an upland pasture. 

“ I guess we need an arrow here,” said Art, 
“ pointing back the other way, to show folks where 
to go into the woods if they enter from this side.” 


202 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


He nailed up the last but one of the arrows. The 
last one was put on the fence post by the bars at 
the foot of the pasture, also pointing back up the 
trail, and the scouts swung into the road and walked 
home around the mountain. 

“ Trail number one,” said Rob. 

Trail number two, from the top of Burgoyne’s 
Pass ten miles south along the mountain ridge, was 
not so simple a proposition. A dozen boys or more 
tackled it the first day, with brush scythes and 
hatchets, and cleared it out for about three miles, 
coming at noon to an opening in the woods, where 
they suddenly found themselves on a rocky ledge at 
the top of a steep cliff, with a great prospect to the 
west, over the valley, over the next range of hills, 
clear to the blue Catskills. 

I name this ‘ Lookout Rock,^ ” Rob declared, 
printing the words on a scout arrow, with a heavy 
lead pencil, and nailing the arrow to a tree. 

The boys ate their lunches on Lookout Rock, and 
then started on along the trail, but they hadn’t gone 
far when they met a man, hastening toward them. 

“ Here, what are you doing?” he cried, angrily. 
‘‘Stop it! This is private property. I’ve a good 
mind to arrest you all.” 

“ You’ve got a swell chance 1” said Peanut. 


SOMETHING NEW FOR SCOUT WORK 203 

“ Shut up, Peanut,” cautioned Rob. Then he 
turned to the man. “We are simply trying to clear 
out this trail,” he explained, “ so it will be easy to 
walk on. The scouts are going to open up some of 
the mountain trails around this region.” 

“ Are you, now ? ” the man replied. “ Well, 
you’re not going to clear out this one. You’re 
going to clear out yourselves. These woods are 
owned by Mr. Kinsman, and he don’t want any 
trespassing. Those are my orders.” 

The boys were pretty mad, but Rob kept his 
temper. 

“I’ll write to Mr. Kinsman and get his permis- 
sion,” the scout said. “ Come on, fellows, we’ll go 
back for to-day.” 

The scouts withdrew, muttering. But that night 
Rob kept his word. Mr. Kinsman was a very 
wealthy New Yorker who had a summer estate in 
the town next to Southmead, and he had bought 
up thousands and thousands of acres of surrounding 
woodland. 

The second day Rob got a reply. Mr. Kinsman 
was very nice. He said he did not want poaching 
on his land, and that he had to hire game wardens 
to prevent it, and to prevent fern pickers from root- 
ing up all his ferns. But, he added, he thought 


204 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

from what he had heard that he could trust the 
scouts not to hunt on his land, nor destroy any 
ferns or trees, and if they’d give him their word of 
honor that they would cut nothing but the brush on 
the trail, and would build no fires, they might go 
ahead. 

Rob proudly displayed the letter, and the next 
fair day he and four or five other scouts set out 
again on trail number two. 

“Where are all the rest?” Rob asked. 

“Oh, the quitters!” said Peanut. “They say 
it’s too hard work chopping brush all day. They 
wouldn’t come.” 

“Well,” said Rob, “ I guess we can go it alone.” 

They found the way much easier, indeed, as they 
got into Mr. Kinsman’s preserves, for the road had 
been already pretty well trimmed out. The warden 
appeared once in the distance, but he had evidently 
had his orders not to molest them. They put ar- 
rows every half mile or so, wherever a second wood 
road led ofi and might cause possible confusion, and 
in the afternoon they came down to the valley, find- 
ing themselves near a village about eight or nine 
miles from home by the valley road. 

Almost in their path, however, was another moun- 
tain, about 1, 800 feet high, which stood out free of 


SOMETHING NEW FOR SCOUT WORK 205 

both the west and east ranges, and divided the 
Southmead valley from the valley down the river. 
The river wound about the base of this mountain, 
and the Toad ran up over one shoulder, When the 
boys got up on this shoulder it was about three 
o’clock. 

“Who’s game for climbing the mountain and 
bringing oui trail home right along the summit ? ” 
cried Rob. 

“II” 

“II” 

“II” 

“II” 

“ Me ! ” finished Peanut. 

“ Good,” said Rob. “ Art and I have been up 
here before, hunting arbutus. There’s a path some- 
where around here.” 

They finally found the path, and put up the last 
of their scout arrows. The climb began at once. It 
was a steep, rocky scramble, in one place up an al- 
most perpendicular ledge. It took the scouts half 
an hour to make the ascent. Then they stood on 
the rocky southern nose of the mountain and had the 
finest view yet of the valley and winding river be- 
low them. 

“ Gee, why don’t people climb more, and ride in 


206 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


motors less?” cried Art. “You don’t see the 
country in a motor car.” 

“Aw, most people are too lazy ! ” said Peanut. 
“ Look at the women who ride in motors — they’re 
always fat ! ” 

The boys now made their way along the summit, 
which was like a great razor-back hog of stone. 
They had no more scout arrows, but that didn’t mat- 
ter, because all you had to do to keep the path was 
to keep on the narrow summit. They cleared off 
brush here and there, and on one ledge they cut a 
small tree out of the way to open up the view. The 
summit was a mile long. At the northern end they 
looked down into Southmead. The little-used and 
overgrown path now plunged down into the woods. 
The scouts cleared it out as they went along, and 
finally blazed the trees at the entrance. It emerged 
into the pastures of Sky Farm, an old, abandoned 
farm on the north shoulder of the mountain. From 
there on a road led down the steep hill into South - 
mead. It was six o’clock when the tired scouts 
reached home. 

“ But trail number two is finished ! ” cried Rob. 

“ Better make the last part trail number three,” 
said Art. “ It will give us more trails.” 

“ O. K.,” said Rob. “ Number three it is I ” 


SOMETHING NEW FOR SCOUT WORK 207 

With varying fortunes in getting other scouts to 
help them, these same five or six, headed by Rob, 
opened up and marked three more trails in the next 
fortnight, and on the top of one mountain they put a 
tin box containing a note-book and pencil, building 
a little stone shelter over it to keep it from being 
blown away. Each boy wrote his name and the date 
in the book, and on the tin box they scratched with 
a nail the words : 

Everybody write here. 

As they were coming home from this trip. Art said 
suddenly, “ Why couldn’t we make maps of these 
trails, and put ’em in the hotels, so other people 
would know where they are ? ” 

“ Fine ! ” cried Rob. ‘‘ We might get up a little 
book of maps, with a few words telling about each 
trail, and sell ’em for ten cents. It would help 
toward keeping up the Scout House.” 

So that very night Rob and Art set to work, with 
black drawing ink, and traced the general outlines 
of the maps from the United States Geological Sur- 
vey maps of the region, marking in with a heavy 
line the scout trails. (You can always get the 
United States Geological Survey maps of your re- 


208 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


gion from Washington, for five cents apiece, and 
they are the very best maps you can have.) 

Then Rob wrote a little description of each trail, 
and showed them to Mr. Rogers, who made a few 
corrections, and did the lettering under the maps 
himself, to have it particularly neat and attractive. 

When they were done, Rob took them to the 
nearest printer. Each map, reduced to four by six 
inches, would cost about $1.25 to engrave. There 
were six maps. That made $7.50. Opposite each 
map was to be a page of type, describing that par- 
ticular hike, and a title page, reading : 

Tramps and Trails 
Around 
Southmead 


Mapped and published 
by the 

Southmead Boy Scouts 

This was also printed on the cover, with the added 
words, “ Price, 10 cents.” The whole bill for print- 
ing five hundred of these little booklets was $15. 
Whether the printer was letting the boys down easy 
or not, he didn’t say. 

“Now,” said Rob, “if we sell all these books, 
we’ll take in $50, and clear $35.” 


SOMETHING NEW FOR SCOUT WORK 209 

All the scouts took some to sell, and piles of them 
were put on sale at the two hotels in Southmead. 
They didn’t sell more than three hundred that sum- 
mer, but even so they cleared $15, they had the rest 
for the next season, and they had the satisfaction of 
seeing several parties of summer visitors start out 
from the hotels, books in hand, to hike over the 
scout trails. 

“ That’s something new in boy scout work,” said 
one man, as he returned, and met Art and Rob in 
the street. “ I want to thank you boys for the best 
walk I’ve had in years.” 

The boys looked pleased. “ Which one did you 
take?” asked Rob. 

“Number six to-day — thought I’d begin at the 
back,” he answered. “I wrote my name in the book 
on the summit, too ! ” 

“We’re going up to get the book about No- 
vember,” Rob said, “and take it back in the 
spring.’' 

. “ Well, it will be fun to see how many names you 
can get in a season, won’t it ? ” said the man. 

“ That’s so,” said Art. “ I never thought of that.” 

“ Good-bye,” the man called out as he departed. 
“ I’m going to try number five as soon as my legs 
get rested.” 


210 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

“ You’d better join the scouts/’ called back Rob. 
“We need all the hikers we can get.” 

The man laughed. “ I’ll have to hike off a few 
more pounds before I can keep up with you,” he 
said. 


CHAPTER XXI 

A Slump in Scout Enthusiasm 

B ut all through June and early July, when Rob 
and Art and Peanut were leading in the trail 
blazing, Rob noticed that it was the same group of 
three or four scouts who went with them — Prattie, 
who was fat and rather lazy, but always willing to do 
what the rest did if he got enough to eat, Lou Mer- 
ritt, and Dennie O’Brien, with occasionally one or 
two of the older patrols, like the Teddy Bear Bolton, 
or Joe Donovan, who came on Sunday afternoons, for 
he had to work during the week days. The rest of 
the famous Chipmunk Patrol didn’t come after the 
first hike or two, nor the smaller boys in the two lit- 
tle patrols that had been taken in the previous 
autumn. These two patrols, the Weasels and the 
Rabbits, had been having first aid all winter with 
Dr. Henderson, and Mr. Rogers was taking them out 
once a week or so for scout work, but for some 
reason or other Rob couldn’t get them to go on the 
trail blazing expeditions. Peanut contented himself 
with calling them “ stiffs,” but Rob, who was older 

2II 


212 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


and who by virtue of his office as Chipmunk Patrol 
leader felt a personal responsibility for the success of 
the scout movement, used to worry about it. 
Finally, one day, he went to see Mr. Rogers. 

“ There’s kind of a slump in scout enthusiasm, I 
guess,” he said. “ Last evening meeting we had only 
eight there, and I can’t get any of the little fellows to 
go on our trail making hikes at all. I wish we could 
think of some way to get enthusiasm worked up 
again. Couldn’t you take us camping ? ” 

Mr. Rogers shook his head. “ Sorry, Rob, but 
I’m too busy to get away now. You see, I took my 
holiday with you three down in the Swamp. Per- 
haps that wasn’t quite fair to the rest, was it ? ” 

“ Maybe not,” said Rob, “ but that’s all the more 
reason why Peanut and Art and I ought to help with 
the other scouts. Seems sometimes as if they were 
all getting kind of tired of scouting. Of course, the 
two older patrols are sort of growing out of it. All 
Joe Donovan’s crowd are at work — they are really 
men now — and the Teddy Bear’s crowd would all 
rather be taking girls canoeing on the river than 
going on hikes with us. But the little fellows ought 
to be interested.” 

Mr. Rogers smiled. ‘‘ I guess when a scout grows 
up to the age when he wants to ‘ fuss ’ the girls 


A SLUMP IN SCOUT ENTHUSIASM 213 

youVe got to expect he’ll cut a lot of scout meetings, 
that’s a fact,” he said. “ But is that what’s the 
trouble with Willie Walker, and Frank Nichols, of 
your patrol ? Surely it can’t be the matter with the 
Weasels and Rabbits.” 

Rob laughed. “ Gee, Willie Walker never looked 
at a girl except to pull her hair ! ” he said. “No, 
Willie, I’ll admit, has to work awful hard on his 
father’s farm, and Frank Nichols is working about as 
hard, I guess, in his father’s shop. It’s too bad, too, 
because both of ’em ought to have stayed in school. 
Their fathers let ’em quit as soon as they were four- 
teen, and we began to lose ’em in the scouts right 
away. Sometimes they come around evenings.” 

“Well,” said Mr. Rogers, “there’s your Chip- 
munk Patrol accounted for. You say Lou and 
Dennie are with you, and Prattie, too. Now, the 
only real problem, then, is with the Rabbits and 
Weasels, eh ? Are you sure you didn’t work ’em too 
hard on your first hikes ? You know, it’s no snap 
cutting brush all day and climbing a mountain in the 
bargain. It’s real work, Rob, and small boys want to 
play^ not work. You’ve got to make it seem like 
play to the smaller patrols. You and Peanut and 
Art, especially, have been off to the Dismal Swamp 
and had real woodcraft, and all this hiking ’round here 


214 boy scouts in the dismal swamp 

seems like a perfect picnic to you. Have you really 
tried to think up something that would be easy and 
pleasant for the little kids ? I’ll bet a cent you and 
Peanut go at ’em when they can’t keep up and talk 
scornfully — come now, don’t you ?” 

Mr. Rogers laughed, and Rob colored a little. 
“ But they get so lazy sometimes,” he said. 

“ If they are lazy, it means you’re not doing the 
right thing to keep ’em interested,” Mr. Rogers re- 
plied. “ Blazing the trails is a fine thing, one of the 
best our scouts have ever done, but I guess you have 
to be at least a second-class scout before you really 
see the fun in it, and most of the Rabbits and 
Weasels are still only tenderfeet. You and Peanut 
and Art get your heads together and dope out some- 
thing new now for the rest of the summer. It’s up 
to you scouts to carry on the work a bit. Think if I 
should get sick, or move away from Southmead — 
what would become of the movement? ” 

Rob went away very gravely, his brows knit, and 
reported to Art and Peanut what the scout master 
had said. 

“ Aw, gee, the quitters I ” cried Peanut. “ We 
didn’t have to have any older fellers helping us/ ” 

“ Maybe we were smarter than the Rabbits and 
Weasels,” Art laughed. 


A SLUMP IN SCOUT ENTHUSIASM 215 

“ Sure we were,” retorted Peanut. 

“ All the more reason, then, why we should help 
the others,” said Rob. “ Come on there. Peanut, 
stand on your head and get another idea.” 

“ Pve got one without standing on my head ! ” cried 
Peanut, suddenly. “ Let’s take ’em out and build a 
real log cabin in the woods somewhere, where we 
can go and stay over night, and have meetings, but 
that won’t be so far away that the fellers who have 
to work or caddy afternoons can’t get there before 
supper.” 

“ Hooray,” cried Art, “ that is a good idea ! Where 
can we build it ? ” 

“There’s the trouble,” said Rob. “ *Ay, there’s the 
rub,’ as Hamlet says in the play you’ll read senior 
year. If we were in the Swamp, now, we could build 
it anywhere. But ’round here who’s going to let us 
cut down enough trees to make a log cabin with ? 
I’m sure I don’t know.” 

“ Mr. Van Antwerp,” said Peanut. 

“ That’s a lot of help,” sniffed Art, “ as both he 
and Reggie are in Europe this summer I ” 

“Well, then,” said Peanut, “ how about Bowser’s 
woods? Mr. Bowser lets people walk all through 
’em, and builds drives through for carriages, too.” 
“No good;” Rob replied, ” Those woods are 


2i6 boy scouts in THE DISMAL SWAMP 

really his garden. He wouldn’t let anybody cut 
down a tree in them.” 

“ I have it ! ” Art exclaimed. “ Mr. Bowser owns 
that little peninsula of pines that juts out into the 
river a mile below the golf links, over across the 
meadows from his big woods and his house. 
They’re awful thick, and need thinning out. I was 
in them hunting rabbits one day last w inter. There 
must be a spring around somewhere, and we could 
get down to the cabin by boat on the river if we 
wanted to. We could carry all our tools and things 
down that way, anyhow.” 

“ Good for you. Art,” cried Rob ; ** let’s go see Mr. 
Bowser this afternoon. There’s no time like the 
present.” 

“ Yes,” said Peanut, pro-pro-pro — something or 
other is the thief of time. Remember I had to copy 
that into my memory gem book in the eighth grade.” 

“Well, you didn’t remember it very well,” Rob 
laughed. 

The three boys walked a mile down the road to 
the big house where Mr. Bowser lived, set back amid 
a beautiful grove of trees, with pine woods behind it, 
acres of them. Mr. Bowser raised trees where other 
people raise gardens. He was an elderly man, with 
white hair and a pair of twinkling blue eyes. 


A SLUMP IN SCOUT ENTHUSIASM 217 

He listened to the boys’ request in silence, how- 
ever, and when they had finished he led them across 
the road, down a path through his meadow to the 
river, and the four of them got into a motor boat 
there, and chugged up-stream a few hundred feet to 
where, on a bend of the stream, a high, rocky cape 
jutted out, covered with young pine and a few hem- 
lock. Mr. Bowser ran the boat around this cape, 
and on the up-stream side they found a tiny beach 
where the boat was grounded and they disembarked. 
Mr. Bowser led the way up the bank into the grove, 
which covered two or three acres. The main trees 
were of a uniform height of about thirty feet, but 
they grew very close so that their trunks were 
slender, and between them were scores of smaller trees 
which had been kept stunted by the shade of the 
stronger ones. The dead branches near the ground 
made travel through them very painful and difficult. 

“ I should say this grove rather did need thinning 
outl ” said the man with a laugh, as a limb caught 
his straw hat off his head, and another poked him in 
the face. 

“ It sure does,” said Peanut, hopeful that Mr. 
Bowser was going to let them do the thinning. 

“ But I’m not so sure you boys would know what 
trees to take out,” Mr. Bowser went on, while the 


2i8 boy scouts in THE DISMAL SWAMP 


scouts’ hopes fell. “ You can kill a grove by taking 
out the wrong trees, you know. And what would 
you do for water? You can’t drink the river.” 

“ Bring it in bottles,” Peanut suggested. 

“ Quite unnecessary,” said the man. “ There 
happens to be a good spring just back of this 
grove, up toward the road. You boys didn’t know 
that, did you ? What kind of scouts are you ? Why, 
it makes a little brook that comes into the river not 
fifty feet above where we beached the launch ! ” 

He laughed, and the hopes of the boys rose 
again. 

“ I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he went on. “ I’ll let 
you build your log cabin here if you’ll bring at least 
twelve boys down and let me give you all a lesson 
in forestry. I’ll show you what trees to cut, and tell 
you why to cut ’em. But we’ve got to have pretty 
severe laws about fires, and about clearing up all 
brush and timber slash. I’m going to make you 
promise to remove all the slash you cut, and to light 
only one fire, and that always in a stone fireplace, 
either inside the cabin or in front, near the water. 
What do you do with a fire when you get through 
with it?” 

The three boys laughed. “Put it out,” they said ; 
“ that’s the first thing a scout learns.” 


A SLUMP IN SCOUT ENTHUSIASM 219 

“ Well, see that it’s the last thing he forgets,” said 
Mr. Bowser. “Will you boys be here to-morrow 
morning, say at nine o’clock?” 

“ Yes, sir,” Rob answered, “ we’ll round up all the 
scouts we can.” 

“ Good,” said the man. “ I’ll meet you here at 
the grove.” 

The boys helped him push off his motor boat, and 
then they went up through the grove to the back 
road and so home, and started on a rounding up 
expedition to the houses of the Rabbit and Weasel 
Patrols. 

The Rabbits and Weasels took at once to the idea 
of building a log hut, especially as the expedition 
down to Hut Point, as Rob, Peanut and Art named 
it, was to be made in boats. Every scout was told 
to bring an ax or a hatchet or a saw, and Rob and 
Art had drawing-knives to trim and smooth the logs 
with. As an all-day trip was planned, lunches were 
also ordered. 

The next morning at eight o’clock Rob, to his 
delight, found exactly twelve scouts at the boat 
landing by the railroad bridge, not counting Peanut, 
who presently came panting down the road with an 
old window frame in a wheelbarrow. 

“ Gee, we gotter have a window,” he said, “ so I 


220 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


begged this one off dad ; used to be in the barn, and 
we took it out and made a door.” 

“ Good work,” said Rob. “ All aboard now for 
Hut Point ! ” 

There were three boats available for fourteen boys 
and the window frame. The frame was carefully 
put across the bow of the largest boat, without 
smashing any of the panes, and with a cheer the 
flotilla moved out upon the current. Peanut hanging 
on to his window to keep it from slipping off. The 
river wound and twisted so through the meadows 
that it was nearly three miles to Hut Point by boat, 
though only one mile by road. The waterway led 
first through the golf links, and the boys began to 
look for balls along the banks, because wild shots 
frequently went into the river and floated out of 
reach, later being carried inshore by the current 
and getting tangled in the weeds. 

“ Hi, whoa ! ” yelled Charlie Saunders, one of the 
Rabbits. “ I see a ball ! ” 

Art, who was rowing that boat, put her nose in- 
shore under a fallen willow, and Charlie fished out a 
nice, new white ball. 

“ Let’s see it, Charlie,” somebody asked. “ Gee, 
you can sell it for a quarter ! ” 

Just then there came a yell from Peanut’s boat, or, 


A SLUMP IN SCOUT ENTHUSIASM 221 


rather, two yells, one from Peanut and one from 
Piper Parker, a little Weasel who was called Piper 
because of his shrill voice. Prattie was at the oars 
of that boat, and he put the bow in toward some 
fallen alders over a bend in the stream, where a ball 
was bobbing up and down, caught in the crotch of a 
twig. 

I seen it first ; iPs mine ! Piper was yelling, 
standing up in his excitement. 

“ You’re another ; I saw it first ! ” cried Peanut. 

As the boat drew near. Peanut made a grab for 
the ball, but the end of the window frame caught 
against the alder and shoved the bow off so he 
couldn’t quite reach. The boat passed on before 
Prattie could stop it, and Piper made a wild grab 
for the ball, too. He reached so far that he tilted the 
boat, and Peanut’s window frame, already unbalanced 
by the bushes, suddenly slid off into the water. 

“ Hi, you chump, what are you doin’ ? ” Peanut 
cried, making a desperate grab for the frame. His 
grab still further tilted the boat, and poor Piper went 
splash into the water. THe other boys yelled, and 
the other two boats came rushing to the scene. 

Piper was a good swimmer. He took two strokes 
and grabbed the ball ! Then he came back and 
grabbed the gunw^ale of the boat. 


222 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

‘‘Steady there,” called Rob, “or you’ll upset 
everybody ! ” 

“ Oh, let him swim the rest of the way,” shouted 
Peanut. “ Look at my window going down-stream I ” 

“ Go get the window. Art,” Rob called to the 
third boat. “ Careful you don’t upset getting it 
aboard.” 

The third boat set off after the window, and Rob’s 
boat stood by while the dripping Piper was hauled 
aboard, still clutching firmly to his golf ball. 

“ Well, you’re a nice one, you are,” sniffed Peanut. 

“ But I got the ball — a brand new Glory Dimple, 
too ! ” cried Piper. 

“ It’s my ball at that,” said Peanut. 

“ ’Tain’t.” 

“ ’Tis.” 

“ ’Tain’t.” 

“Yes it is. Peanut,” laughed Rob. “Piper got 
wet for it, so he deserves it. We’ll have to dry him 
when we get to land. Come on, now, no more fish- 
ing for golf balls. The first man that sees a golf 
ball gets thrown overboard and left behind.” 

“ Hooray I ” cried Peanut. 

Piper, sitting on the stern seat and dripping dis- 
mally, glared at him. 

Down-stream the third boat had rescued the win- 


A SLUMP IN SCOUT ENTHUSIASM 223 


clow, and not a pane was smashed. The flotilla has- 
tened on under the willows, starting up a blue heron 
and a pair of kingfishers, and presently came into 
sight of Hut Point. Mr. Bowser was already wait- 
ing on the tiny beach. He waved his hat, and the 
scouts gave a cheer. In another moment their keels 
grated the gravel, the boys scrambled out, and 
Piper began to peel off his clothes. 


CHAPTER XXII 
The Lesson in Forestry 
OU’LL be a great help in among those prickly 



Jl dead pine boughs/’ said Mr. Bowser, as Piper 
stood in his birthday clothes on the bank and spread 
his wet garments on a rock to dry. 

“They’ll get dry quick,” shrilled Piper. “You 
oughter feel how hot this rock is. Wow ! ” He 
danced up and down as the sun-baked rock burnt 
his bare feet. 

“ We’ll leave him dancing,” said Mr. Bowser, with 
a wink at the other boys, “ and make a start. You 
won’t need your axes yet. Leave them here, and 
make your boats fast, so the current won’t carry them 
away.” 

Following the man, the scouts now climbed up the 
bank into the three acres of thick young pine forest, 
with here and there a deeper green hemlock. After 
a few steps in, Mr. Bowser called the boys around 
him, and pointed to the ground. “ What do you 
see there ? ” he asked. 

“ Pine-needles,” said one boy. 


THE LESSON IN FORESTRY 


225 


Dead twigs,’' said another. 

Art, Peanut and Rob were on their knees. 

“ I see two or three little pine trees coming up,” 
cried Peanut. 

“ Here’s something that looks like a maple — yes, 
it is a maple,” said Art. 

“ And here’s another that looks like a chestnut,” 
said Rob. 

“Well, now, there are real scouts for you! ” Mr. 
Bowser declared to the other boys. “You see just 
pine-needles, and they get down and find the really 
important things. Now, boys, if we should cut all 
this wood down, what do you suppose would happen 
to those little trees ? Come, take a look at them, so 
you’ll know ’em the next time.” 

“ If you cut all this wood down, I suppose you’d 
tread on a lot of ’em, and kill ’em,” said somebody. 

“ Yes, I guess you would, but that isn’t the worst 
thing that would happen. Guess again.” 

“ The hard wood trees would grow up and kill off 
the little pines,” said Art. “ Hard wood always 
grows up when you cut off a pine forest, doesn’t it?” 

“ Usually,” said Mr. Bowser. “ But can you tell 
me why ? There are more little pines springing up 
here now than there are chestnuts or maples.” 

None of the boys could answer this, 


226 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


“ Well, as far as I can make it out,^’ the man re- 
plied to his own question, “ it’s because the little 
evergreens, to get a start in the world, need shade 
and a dampish, cool soil. You see, in under the 
trees here the ground never dries out hot ; it is al- 
ways cool and shaded. Now, when you cut a piece 
of woodland all off, or chop a hole in it anywhere 
and let the sun in, you bake out the soil and your 
little evergreen seedlings can’t live. What is the re- 
sult? Why, we haven’t got any pine woods any 
more, except mine, over across the river ! Pine is 
our most valuable lumber, and pine woods our most 
beautiful forests, yet we have destroyed them.” 

“ But how are you going to get the lumber if you 
don’t cut off the woods ? ” said Peanut. 

“ Ah, ha ! That’s just what I’m going to show 
you,” Mr. Bowser replied. He put his hand on a 
small pine, breaking off the lower dead branches, so 
the boys could come close to the trunk. “ Now, 
boys, all of you take a good look up into the top of 
this tree,” he said. “ What do you see ? ” 

“ ’Tisn’t so high as the others,” one boy suggested. 

“ The bigger trees are so close to it they’ve sorter 
set it back,” suggested another. 

“Well, you’re improving as foresters,” said Mr. 
Bowser. “That’s just what I wanted you to see, 


THE LESSON IN FORESTRY 


227 


Now, suppose we cut this tree down, carefully, so it 
doesnT hurt other trees when it falls. We’ll get a log 
for the house, won’t we ? We won’t let any more sun 
in here on the ground to dry out the soil, because the 
other trees will make shade enough, and so the little 
seedlings will keep on growing. We’ll go all 
through the grove doing that, and get all the logs 
we need. Then we’ll clean up all the brush we’ve 
made, so it won’t litter the ground and dry up and 
make a fine fuel for a forest fire, and the big trees 
will go right ahead growing all the better with these 
others out of the soil, and the seedlings will grow 
just as well. 

**Now, suppose you imagine it’s ten years later. 
Your seedlings here on the ground have got a good 
start and they are as tall as your heads. They’ve 
got such a good start that now they need some sun, 
and they’ve begun to make shade themselves. You 
come into the grove again with an ax, and you cut 
out some of the big trees — not all of them, because 
you don’t want to destroy your seed bearers, nor let 
in too much sun ; but you cut out enough to give 
you a lot of fine pine lumber. Then you wait an- 
other ten years. The little trees are stronger and 
bigger still. They have begun to make seeds, and 
they make a good shade, just as these trees do now. 


228 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


So you take out some more of your big fellows. 
And so you go on, always taking out some trees, but 
always leaving as many or more behind, to make 
seeds and shade, to keep the soil cool and moist, to 
furnish lumber for the next generation. You see, 
boys, there’s no need whatever of cutting a grove all 
down. It’s just foolish, criminal slaughter.” 

“ Isn’t that cutting out of part of the trees, always 
leaving more little ones behind, what you call con- 
servation?” asked Rob. 

“Yes,” said Mr. Bowser, “and pretty soon we’ll 
have a talk on it. Just now, one of you boys go 
back and see if Piper is still dancing, and bring me 
an ax.” 

A couple of the scouts ran back laughing, and soon 
reappeared with an ax and Piper, clad in his trousers 
and undershirt. 

“ Gee, my shoes an’ coat ain’t dry yet 1 ” he said. 

Mr. Bowser handed Piper the ax. “ Warm your- 
self up with this,” he said. “ Let me see you take 
down that tree.” 

Piper seized the ax and stepped up to the tree. 
He swung the ax back, and fetched the tree a cut 
two feet above the ground. 

“ Stop ! cried Mr. Bowser. “ Wrong. Next boy 
try it ! ” 


THE LESSON IN FORESTRY 


229 


The next boy hit harder than Piper, and buried the 
ax blade deep into the soft, pitchy wood just above 
Piper’s mark. 

“ Wrong again,” said Mr. Bowser. “ Here, Pea- 
Uiit, you try it.” 

[“ Cut her low^^ whispered Art.] 

“No coaching from the side lines, there I ” Mr. 
Bowser laughed. 

Peanut swung for the very bottom of the tree, first 
downward, and then, stooping his body, he swung 
almost along the line of the ground, taking out a V 
shaped chip. 

“ Correct I ” cried Mr. Bowser. “ Why did you 
do it?” 

Peanut grinned. “ ’Cause Art told me to.” 

“ Art, why did you tell him to ?” the man asked. 

“ Because you save two feet of wood and don’t 
leave any stump that way,” Art replied. 

“ Go to the head of the class. I’ll make you my 
chief forester when you grow up,” Mr. Bowser 
laughed. “That’s the right idea, boys. Take all 
the trees down to the ground. I don’t want rotting 
stumps left sticking up in my woods, and you want 
all the wood you can get. Now, Piper, let’s see you 
take the tree down.” 

Piper went at it again, this time at the bottom. 


230 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

When he had chopped six inches into the trunk, the 
tree toppled and crashed down, bringing with it a 
lot of dead stuff from the surrounding trees. 

“ Now,” said Mr. Bowser, “ one of you scouts go 
get a saw and clean off that spike splinter sticking 
up from the middle of the stump, so nobody will step 
on it.” 

A boy ran for a saw, while the rest debated how 
long a hut they wanted. They decided finally on a 
14X lo foot structure, and Peanut produced with a 
grin of triumph a folding carpenter’s rule from his 
pocket, and measured off fourteen feet on the larger 
end. As the remaining eight feet of this tree was 
too short for use in the hut, Mr. Bowser asked what 
they were going to do with it. 

“ Cut it into lengths and let it dry for fire-wood,” 
came three or four voices. 

“ Good, go ahead,” said the man. ‘‘ But how are 
you going to dispose of the dead and green 
branches ? ” 

“ We’ll save some of the dead ones in a pile for 
kindlings,” Rob suggested, and chuck the rest in 
the river.” 

“In the river, eh? You will not!” Mr. Bowser 
exclaimed. “The current will bring ’em all over 
and land ’em on my meadow bank! No, you’d 


THE LESSON IN FORESTRY 231 

better take them in loads out into the field behind 
the grove and make a bonfire. Don’t wait till you’ve 
built your hut, but carry the slash away just as 
soon as the logs are cut. Now, we’ll go through 
the grove and mark the trees we are going to 
remove. Each of you select a tree he thinks ought 
to come out, and stand by it. Then I’ll come around 
and see if he’s right.” 

The boys scattered through the woods, and each 
picked out a tree. Mr. Bowser took a lot of narrow 
strips of white cotton cloth from his pocket, and fol- 
lowed the boys about. In every case where he 
decided the scout had picked wisely, he tied a piece 
of cloth around that tree, which meant it could 
be cut down. In several cases he showed the boys 
why the trees they had picked shouldn’t be cut. 
Sometimes it was because a cut there would let too 
much light into the woods, sometimes because the 
tree was stronger and healthier than one next to it, 
sometimes because it couldn’t be felled without in- 
juring other trees too much. When they had picked 
out about thirty or thirty-five trees, Mr. Bowser de- 
clared that was enough for the present. 

Now, before you begin hauling your logs,” he 
said with a wink at Peanut, “you want to decide 
where you’re going to put the hut Let me give 


232 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

you another tip, too. Don’t begin building till you 
have plenty of logs ready. If you do, you’ll find, 
like as not, that you have bigger logs for the top 
than the bottom. Good-bye, boys ; I’ll be back this 
afternoon to see how you are getting on.” 

** Good-bye,” called the scouts. 

Then they all seized axes, hatchets and saws and 
went to work on the trees. 

Did you ever cut white pine in midsummer, when 
the pitchy sap is running? The scouts very soon 
discovered why it is the lumbermen work in winter. 
Poor Piper kept getting his ax stuck so hard in the 
soft, sticky wood that he could hardly pull it out, 
and every boy’s hands were soon black with pitch. 

“Say, I’m not going to spoil my shirt,” said Pea- 
nut, suddenly, peeling off that garment and leaving 
it by the boats. The rest followed suit, and soon 
more than a dozen boys were chopping away in 
their undershirts. Yells for Peanut kept going up, 
and he ran from tree to tree, measuring off fourteen 
and ten-foot lengths. Naturally it didn’t take long 
for fourteen boys to cut down thirty-five small pine 
trees, none of which were more than eight inches in 
diameter, and to strip the trunks of branches, es- 
pecially as the grove was so thick that the branches 
were mostly dead for fifteen feet up the trunks. By 


THE LESSON IN FORESTRY 


233 


half-past eleven the marked trees were down, and 
cut into thirty fourteen and twenty ten-foot lengths. 

“ Now, boys,’^ said Rob, “ before we decide where 
to build the hut, let’s clear away the brush.” 

“ Aw, no ! ” came half a dozen voices. ** Let’s 
decide on the hut first.” 

“No, sir,” said Rob, “we’ve got to get the slash 
cleared out first, before Mr. Bowser comes back. 
He let us cut his trees down under the promise that 
we’d clear out the rubbish, and we’ve got to keep 
our word, haven’t we ? Go to it. Piper, and all of 
you ! ” 

The scouts went to it, and found it no easy job, 
without any wheelbarrows, until Art suddenly 
had a happy idea. He took the ends of two long 
limbs, one in each hand, and told Peanut to pick up 
the other ends. Thus they made the two poles of a 
stretcher. Across these poles the others piled the 
chopped-off limbs and small dead stuff till the load 
was as heavy as the two bearers could hold, and 
then Peanut and Art took it into the field behind the 
grove and dumped it into a heap — incidentally stop- 
ping for a drink at the spring each time, for it was 
hot work in the close, breathless pine woods. After 
an hour of this the litter. was pretty well cleaned up, 
for two other boys also made a stretcher and 


234 boy scouts in THE DISMAL SWAMP 

carted, too, thus keeping the crowd who picked up 
busy all the time. 

“Now we’ll pick the place for the hut, and have 
lunch,” said Rob. 

“ We oughter put it where we can see the water,” 
shrilled Piper. 

“ Haven’t you seen enough water to*day ? ” asked 
Peanut scornfully. 

“ Just the same, we oughter,” Piper persisted. 

“ Piper’s right, I think,” said Art. “ We ought to 
have the hut where we can see up and down stream, 
but in among the trees enough so folks on the river 
can’t see us.” 

“ Gee, don’t you wish we had those cane-brakes 
down in the Swamp for a screen, Art?” asked 
Peanut. 

“You bet, and Lake Drummond out there instead 
of the river,” Art replied. “ But we haven’t, so let’s 
put her out on the point somewhere.” 

The band moved out on the end of the wooded 
point. They were about ten feet above the water, 
which flowed deep around the nose of rocks. They 
could see both up and down stream. Stepping back 
a few feet, they could still see between the trees, but 
they decided any one on the river wouldn’t spy the 
hut. 


THE LESSON IN FORESTRY 


235 

“ ’Specially as it’s made of the same wood, and so 
is protectively colored,” said Art. 

“ What’s that ? ” asked Piper. 

Art explained, and Piper cried, “ I vote for the hut 
here!” 

“ That settles it ; Piper says it goes here,” laughed 
Rob. “But we’ll just ask the rest as a matter of 
form. Those in favor say ‘ Aye.’ ” 

A roar of “ Ayes ” went up, from all but Piper, who 
looked as if he suspected he was being kidded. 

“ But,” said Peanut, suddenly, “ we’ll have to take 
down two or three trees to make room for the hut 
here, and Mr. Bowser hasn’t marked ’em.” 

“ Oh, he won’t care,” said somebody else. 

“Just the same, we’ve got to wait for him,” Pea- 
nut declared stoutly. “ ’Twouldn’t be fair.” 

“ I know ! ” cried Art. “ We’ll go ahead with the 
hut, and leave the trees inside. If he doesn’t want ’em 
down, they’ll be useful as pillars to hold up the 
roof. If he says we can cut ’em, there’ll be plenty 
of time, ’cause we won’t get as high as the roof to- 
day.” 

“Good for you. Art,” said Rob. “Now for 
lunch ! ” 

The dirty, hot scouts got what little of the black 
pitch they could off their hands — which wasn’t much 


236 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

— at the little stream which flowed from the spring, 
and then ate their lunches. 

“ Gee, my sandwich tastes more like spruce gum 
than it does like ham,” said Peanut. 

“I’m too hungry to care,” said Prattie. 

“Tell us some news,” said Peanut. “You always 
are.” 

Lunch over, the boys looked longingly at the cool 
water below their cape — the cool water that was so 
dirty they couldn’t swim in it. 

“ Nobody’d swim in that stuff, ’cept Piper,” said 
Peanut. “ Hi, Piper, there’s a golf ball going by ! ” 

“ Where ? ” shrilled Piper. 

Sure enough, out in midstream a golf ball was 
bobbing along on the current. Piper and two of the 
Weasels rushed down to the boats, pushed one off, 
and rowed in pursuit. 

“ That makes two to-day,” said Piper, returning in 
triumph. 

“ And I saw both of ’em first ! ” said Peanut. 

“ Now to the hut ! ” called Rob. 

The first work was to drag the logs to the ap- 
pointed place, the next to prepare them for laying. 
Here Peanut and Art took command. Peanut because 
he was the handiest carpenter, and Art because he 
had studied up the ways of making a log cabin in a 


THE LESSON IN FORESTRY 


^ 2>1 

book he had at home. The other scouts worked un- 
der their direction. 

First, exactly six inches in from the ends of each 
log, two jogs were cut with saws and hatchets on the 
top and bottom sides of the log. Then, with the two 
drawing-knives, Rob and Peanut shaved the top and 
bottom of the logs a little to make them fit snugger. 
Of course, the two biggest logs, which were to go 
on the ground, at the long sides, had no notches cut 
on the under side. Now, any boy can see that if you 
fit the under notch on one log at right angles into the 
upper notch on another, you automatically lock the 
two together. When you have four sides to your 
frame, it is thus secure and firm, without a nail. So 
the scouts, when the logs were all notched, put the 
two largest in the desired spot, and scooped out the 
ground under them till they were half buried. Then, 
when the two largest end logs were laid across, these 
end logs, you see, came down flush to the ground. 
They chose a spot for the house where two or three 
trees grew very close to each side, so close that they’d 
keep the walls from falling, almost like supports, and 
only two small trees grew inside. Once the logs 
were notched and the foundation logs laid in place, 
it was a simple matter to lay on the rest. They had 
thirty side logs, but only twenty end ones, however, 


238 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

as some of the trees had not been tall enough to get 
two logs out of. That meant they could only put the 
hut up ten diameters till Mr. Bowser came again. 
But as each log averaged six inches through, the hut 
was up as high as their heads when the chug of the 
motor boat was heard, and they had enough side 
logs to run it up to the full height, as soon as ten 
more end ones were cut. 

“ But what beats me,” Piper was saying, “ is how 
we are going to get into it ! ” 

“ Me, too,” came a chorus. 

Art grinned. “You leave that to your Uncle 
Dudley,” he said. “We’ll have a door, all right, 
and Peanut’s window, too. Only somebody’s got 
to bring a big auger to-morrow. You do it, Prattie ; 
your father’s a carpenter.” 

“ All right,” said Prattie. 

Mr. Bowser now came up the bank, and looked at 
the hut, while the scouts stood around him. 

“ I take off my hat to you, boys,” he said, taking 
off his straw hat as he spoke. “ You’ve done won- 
ders in one day. But how are you going to get 
inside ? ” 

“Just what I wanter know,” came the voice of 
Piper. 

“That’s easy, sir,” said Art. “We’ll saw out a 


THE LESSON IN FORESTRY 


239 


door, when the side frame is all up so the top logs 
will hold it firm, and nail a strip up each end of the 
sawed logs, on the inside of the door frame, to hold 
them in place.” 

‘‘ Well, well, that’s easy, after all,” the man 
laughed. “ Got logs enough ? ” 

The boys told him they needed ten more ten- 
foot logs, and the roof. 

“Let’s see, that’s five more trees for the walls, 
then. The roof wants poles rather than logs, with 
boards over it. Come on, and see what we can 
find.” 

Together they selected five more trees, including 
the two inside the hut, for cutting, and out on the 
edge of the pasture Mr. Bowser pointed to a fringe 
of small white birches, the kind called sometimes 
“poverty birch,” which were rapidly spreading out 
into the grass, as if running away from the pines. 

“ Take all those birches you want for your roof,” 
he said. “They’ll spoil the pasture if they’re not 
cut.” 

Then he led the way back to the landing. It was 
getting late in the afternoon now, 

“There’s just one thing more I want to say to 
you scouts,” he added. “ I want every one of you 
to go home to-night and think it over, too. It’s 


240 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

this. We hear a whole lot about conservation of 
our forests and streams out West, and up in Alaska, 
and we are all in favor of it. But we don’t seem to 
realize that right here at home we ought to be prac- 
ticing conservation. There’s just as much chance 
for conservation on one acre as on 100,000 acres. 
If a hundred men with little farms cut off all their 
timber, they do as much damage to the soil and dry 
up as many brooks as if one man cleared off a single 
big tra^t. I’ve tried to show you boys to-day how 
you can get plenty of lumber without hurting the 
woods at all — doing the woods good, in fact. Now 
I want you to go home, every one of you, and tell 
your fathers about this, and if your fathers own any 
woodland, I want you to go look that woodland 
over, and try to plan how your father could get all 
his fire-wood out of it each winter without cutting it 
all down. Will you do that for me, boys?” 

“ Yes, sir,” came a chorus. 

“ Good for you. So-long till to-morrow.” 

Mr. Bowser’s boat chugged away across the river, 
and the tired and very dirty and pitchy scouts em- 
barked in their three boats and rowed back up- 
stream, pulling hard and wearily against the current. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


Completing the Log Cabin 

M ost of the Rabbits and Weasels had not spent 
many nights in the open, so it was agreed 
that the next day everybody should bring a blanket 
and food, and stay over till the next day. Once 
more there was a good crowd at the boat landing. 
Prattie had his auger, Art a spade, and Peanut a 
pocketful of large wire spikes. 

“ What’s the spade for, Art ? ” asked several. 

“ You’ll see,” said Art. “ This camp is going to 
be made right.” 

The boys went down-stream singing happily, and 
Rob was happy, too. Once more there was enthusi- 
asm in scout work, and it was Art’s and Peanut’s 
and his plan of building the log house which had 
brought it about. 

“ Funny, though,” Rob thought to himself. “ They 
won’t work blazing trails, but they’ll work just as 
hard, or harder, putting up the cabin. I guess kids 
must like to build huts.” 

Rob, you see, was getting quite grown up 1 He 
241 


242 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

had forgotten that he was a kid himself but two or 
three years before I 

The first work to be done when the boats reached 
Hut Point was to cut down the remaining trees. 
That didn’t take long — for all except the two which 
rose in the middle of the half-built house. How 
were they to get those down without knocking over 
the walls ? 

“ I’ll tell you,” said Rob ; “ why not put a log 
across close to the tree, from side to side, and some- 
body hold both ends firm ? Then it will have only a 
little way to fall before it hits this log, and won’t hit 
hard. While it’s resting on the cross log, we can tip 
up the lower end gradually and pull the whole thing 
over. Then we can do the same for the other.” 

The scheme was tried, with two scouts holding 
each end of the cross log, and Art and Rob inside, 
cutting. The moment the trunk was severed, the 
tree fell against the cross log, and with Art and Rob 
hanging on to the lower end tipped gradually like 
a seesaw board till the upper part rested on the 
end wall of the hut. Then it was lifted out with a 
cheer. The other tree was done in the same way, of 
course. 

By eleven o’clock the scouts had got their walls up 
to the full height of fifteen logs, which meant about 


COMPLETING THE LOG CABIN 243 

seven feet and a half. It also meant that they 
couldnT get inside, for there was no door. 

“ Say, I wan ter get inside ! ” Piper piped. “ Cut 
the door. Art.” 

Art laughed, and took the auger from Prattie. 
“ Here goes,” he said. “ We don’t need a high door. 
Everybody’s got to stoop to get in.” 

He set the auger against the middle of a log in the 
front end of the hut toward the river, about on a 
level with his face, and began to bore. When that 
hole was made, he bored another just below it, and 
then a third, taking care that each hole just con- 
nected with the one above. Then he did the same 
thing three feet to the right. 

“ Now, a saw I ” he cried. “ Here, wait ; first we 
want a line marked.” 

From the centre of the auger holes on each side 
he ruled a line down to the bottom log. “ Now, 
Peanut, you do one side and I’ll do the other,” he 
added. 

The two boys thrust their saws into the breach 
made by the auger holes, and began to saw down. 
It was hard work, because the pine wood was so 
fresh and pitchy that it “ bound” the saws. But log 
after log gradually came out. When Art and Pea- 
nut were tired, Lou and Prattie took a hand, and 


244 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

then Rob and Piper. Before long the cuts had been 
carried to the bottom log, which was left uncut as a 
door sill, and also to keep the foundation firm. 

“ There’s your door. Piper,” said Art. 

With a yell of triumph, half the scouts ducked 
their heads and dove through into the hut. 

“ Now,” said Art, “ we’ve got to split a log, and 
nail it up the two sides of the door, to hold the cut 
ends in place. Also, we’ve got to chop off the lower 
part of that log which is half cut on top of the door.” 

“Why did you cut only half of it?” Rob asked. 

“ So’s the braces will have something firm to hold 
’em at the top and bottom, and keep the cut logs 
from shifting,” said Art. 

He and Peanut hunted up a small log and split it, 
shaving the flat side of each half smooth with the 
draw-knife, and cutting them the exact length of the 
door. Then they chopped away the lower half of the 
log at the top of the door, set the flat sides of their 
two split pieces against the cut ends, and drove a 
spike through into each end, as well as into the sill. 
Thus the door frame was completed, and the logs 
which had been sawed through were held firmly in 
place. 

“Now for the roof ! ” cried Rob. 

“ How about my window ? ” asked Peanut. 


COMPLETING THE LOG CABIN 245 

** We’ll put that in the side, same way as we put 
in the door,” said Art. “ But we can’t do it till we 
have some smooth lumber, so we can put on hinges, 
and open it.” 

The scouts now made for the fringe of birches, 
and soon cut enough birch poles to lay across the 
roof. But first they put an extra log on the north 
side, so there would be a slant to the roof. 

” Say, this ain’t going to keep out much rain,” 
Piper remarked, as he looked up through the spaces 
between the poles. “ Don’t even keep out the light.” 

“We ought to have a lot of cane-brake for thatch, 
eh. Art ? ” suggested Peanut. 

“ We’ll have to use hemlock boughs,” said Art. 

“ Ho, I got a better scheme than that,” Pavttie put 
in. “ My dad’s got a lot of tar paper he puts roofs 
and things, and he’ll give us some of that to tack 
over the poles. That’ll keep out the water all right.” 

“Good for you!” cried Rob. “Bring that next 
trip. What’ll we do now ? ” ' 

“ Eat lunch,” said Prattie. 

“ Say,” came the voice of Piper, “ I wanter cook 
some bacon. Where’s the fire in the hut ? Ain’t we 
goin’ to have no chimney ? ” 

“ Chimney I ” sniffed Peanut. “ Say, what do you 
think we-all are? Masons? We’ll have a stove 


246 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

when cold weather comes, with a stovepipe through 
the roof. But we’ll cook outside now.” 

“ Well, let’s do it, then,” said Piper. 

“ All right, suppose you go get some rocks for the 
fire pit,” Peanut suggested. 

Several scouts scattered in various directions, look- 
ing for rocks, and a large fire pit was soon made in 
front of the hut, and a fire lighted in it, of dead pine 
boughs with some larger green birch wood on top. 
The scouts got out their frying-pans, and soon the 
smell of sizzling bacon was in the air. 

After luncheon Art took his spade and disap- 
peared along the river bank, saying nothing about 
his errand. Presently he returned, while the rest 
were clearing away the slash and chips from about 
the >io&e, and announced that he had found clay. 

“What do you want clay for?” half a dozen 
voices asked. “ Going to make bricks for a chim- 
ney ? ” 

“ What do you want clay for, you poor ginks ! ” 
cried Art. “ Take a squint betweeen the logs, and 
see how much cold you think this house is going to 
keep out as it stands I ” 

“ ’Tis kind of airy in spots,” Peanut grinned, pok- 
ing his hand out between two logs. “ But it’s cool 


in summer. 


COMPLETING THE LOG CABIN 247 

“ Oh, let’s leave it this way till winter,” said Prattie. 

“ Gee, you’re lazy,” Art replied. “ No, sir, now 
we’ve begun it, let’s finish it right. Come on, fellers, 
we’ll fill a boat with clay, and bring it back.” 

Art guided the boat up-stream a short distance, 
and out of the bank they dug several bushels of clay, 
brought it back and carted it up into a heap by the 
house, using the boat seats for stretchers to carry it 
on. Then everybody fell to, mixing some pine- 
needles with each fistful of clay to make it stick bet- 
ter in the chinks, and plastering the house up tight, 
working, of course, from the outside. With a dozen 
boys at work, they were fast getting the job com- 
pleted when the chug of Mr. Bowser’s motor boat 
was heard. 

“ Well, well !” he exclaimed, when he saw the hut, 
“ you are good, fast workmen, all right I Again I 
take off my hat to you.” 

Peanut and Art led him through the grove, to 
show him that the slash was all cleared away, and 
that they hadn’t cut any trees which weren’t 
marked. 

“ Fine, boys,” he said. I knew I could trust the 
scouts. Well, I hope you have a pleasant night. 
I’d make you ask me to supper, if I didn’t have vis- 
itors.” 


248 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

“ Bring them along ! ” laughed Peanut. 

Mr. Bowser laughed, too. “ They’re city women,” 
he said. “I’m afraid they wouldn’t understand the 
fun of camping out.” 

It was nearing sunset when he went away, and the 
tired boys had finished all they could of their hut. 

“ There’s just one thing more to do,” said Rob ; 
“ that’s to build a laterine. Come, Piper, I make 
you sanitary commissioner for to-night.” 

“Golly, what’s that?” said the weary Piper. 
“ More work ? ” 

“Just a little,” Rob laughed. “You can select 
two deputy commissioners to help you.” 

“ I choose Jim and Bill,” said Piper. 

The three little scouts, with Rob and the spade, 
disappeared into the woods. Rob selected a spot 
lower than the camp and showed the boys how to 
dig the laterine trench. Then, on the way back, 
they marked out the path to it, and Piper pompously 
gave orders that everybody was to use it, under 
penalty of dire punishment. 

“ And now for supper I ” said Prattie. 

“ Gee, Prattie, you’re as good as a dinner gong,” 
said Art. “ But I’m kinder hungry myself,” he 
added. 

Everybody made for the spring, with soap and 


COMPLETING THE LOG CABIN 249 

towels, and the tiny brook was soon lined with boys, 
busily washing. 

“ Say, it pays to be at the head of this line ! ” cried 
Peanut, as he ruefully surveyed a stream of soapsuds 
flowing past him. “ Guess I’ll wait ! ” 

Supper was a merry meal Some of the scouts 
had chops. One boy had brought a steak, which 
he tried to broil in a frying-pan, though the two 
ends stuck out and got burned. A lot had eggs, 
which were fried with bacon, and Rob had his big 
coffee-pot along, which was soon boiling and send- 
ing out fragrant steam. 

After supper everybody voted to make a grand 
bonfire of the brush heap in the field behind the 
grove. So much of the heap was made up of the 
dead branches from the pines that the pile easily 
lighted, the pitchy live branches crackled and sizzled 
hotly, and a great column of flame rose in the dark- 
ness and lit up the edge of the grove and the faces 
of the boys, who were gradually driven back by the 
heat almost to the shelter of the pines. 

When the big pile was burnt up, everybody had a 
good-night drink at the spring, and went back to 
the new cabin. 

“ Say, what are we goin’ to sleep on ? ” said Piper. 

Well, I’ll be switched I ” cried Art. “ We are a 


250 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

pretty bunch of scouts I Peanut, what’s the matter 
with you? Why didn’t you think about cutting 
some hemlock boughs while there was daylight ? ” 

“You forgot to remind me to remember it,” 
Peanut grinned. “ I don’t care. Me for the open 
ground on the pine-needles, anyhow. It’s hot to- 
night.” 

“ Besides,” said Rob, “ we haven’t got any bunks 
built yet inside the hut.” 

So every boy hunted out a soft spot on the pine- 
needles, curled up in his blanket, and settled down 
for sleep. 

In the morning, after breakfast, the boat that had 
been loaded with clay was washed out clean, and 
the scouts started back for home. It was agreed 
that the next day they were to meet once more, and 
everybody was to scare up one good board from 
somewhere, to build bunks with, while Prattle was 
to bring a roll of tar paper for the roof, and a paper 
of the special large headed tacks to fasten it on. 
Art promised to get some hinges for Peanut’s 
window, too. 

“ Orne more day, and the house will be finished ! ” 
cried Rob. 

It was finished, too. Rough bunks were built 
along two sides of it. Art sawed out a hole in the 


COMPLETING THE LOG CABIN 251 

south side of it for the window, and fitted the frame 
in, hanging it so it could be opened, and Prattie and 
Piper climbed up on the roof, nailing some boards 
on top of the birch poles and stretching tar paper 
over them. Then the few boards which remained 
were nailed together into a rough door, which Pea- 
nut promised to fasten in place with hinges on the 
next trip. All that now^ remained to do was to 
cover the bunks with hemlock boughs. 

“ Hooray, she’s done ! ” shrilled Piper. “ Gee, 
let’s stay again to-night, and sleep inside I ” 

“ Got any grub ? ” somebody asked. 

Piper shook his head sorrowfully. “ I’ll go back 
home and get some, though,” he said. 

But it was decided not to stay that night, but to 
come down the following Monday afternoon, with 
as many scouts as wanted to, and have the weekly 
scout meeting in the hut. The boys went home 
once more, to wait for Monday. 

Monday afternoon came, and at five o’clock the 
boys gathered from various quarters at the boat 
landing, and paddled down the river. Rob had the 
signal flags aboard for some signal practice, and 
everybody had food for two meals, and blankets for 
the night. Singing and shouting, the scouts drew 
near Hut Point. Piper, who was in the bow of the 


252 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

forward boat, was the first ashore, and he sprang up 
the bank. A moment later the rest heard his shrill 
scream of consternation. A dozen boys sprang up 
the bank after him, and followed him into the cabin. 
The sight that met their eyes filled them with rage. 

Every pane of glass in Peanut’s window was 
smashed, and the broken glass lay on the floor. All 
the boughs from the bunks were scattered on the 
floor, also, and one of the bunks had been ripped 
down. The other, apparently, had been too strong. 
The door was nowhere to be seen, but outside Pea- 
nut found it smashed up, evidently with one of the 
rocks from the fire pit, and some of it had been 
burned in the fire pit, too. After burning it, the 
marauders had torn down the pit and scattered the 
stones all around. 

A universal shout went up : “ Who did it ? ” 

Various exclamations followed. 

“ Gee, I’d like to catch ’em I ” 

We’d throw ’em in the river ! ” 

“ Why’d anybody want to do it ? ” 

“ Say, ain’t that the meanest, low down trick you 
ever saw ? ” 

“We goiter catch ’em and make ’em good and 
sorry.” 

“ Well,” put in Rob, “ the first thing to do is to 


COMPLETING THE LOG CABIN 253 

plan out a scheme for catching ’em. Everybody 
look for tracks.” 

The scouts scattered around the cabin, searching 
the ground for some track that would be a clew, but 
the ground was so trodden that the task was pretty 
hopeless. Art, however, disappeared over the bank. 

A few moments later he came back and drew 
Rob and Peanut aside. “I don’t want the rest 
yet,” he said ; “ they’ll only tread on things. Come 
with me.” 

He led the other two down the bank and showed 
them the mark of a boat keel on the beach. “ Our 
boats are all flat bottom,” he said, “ and Mr. Bow- 
ser’s launch is twice as heavy as this mark — see, 
here’s one of his. Somebody came here in a keel- 
boat, we know that. Now, there are no keel boats 
between here and the landing at home. Everybody 
has canoes, or flatboats like ours. It must have 
come from down-stream. It’s only two miles at the 
outside to the power house dam, and the boat must 
have come from between here and the dam. Let 
Peanut and me take a boat and row down on a 
scouting trip.” 

“ Go ahead,” said Rob. 

So Art and Peanut slid off down-stream, while 
Rob reported to the rest. 


254 boy scouts in THE DISMAL SWAMP 

‘‘ Gee, I bet it’s some of those Fresh Air kids,” 
said Prattie. 

“ That’s so,” added Lou. “ You know they’ve 
opened a new Fresh Air summer home for city kids 
down near the power house, on that old farm up 
above the river. Maybe the kids rowed up and 
saw this hut and just smashed it. Gee, that’s 
like city kids — always have to be smashing some- 
thing ! ” 

“ Lets us go smash their faces I ” cried Piper. 

“ Let’s find out first if they did it,” said Rob. 
“ And while we are waiting for Art and Peanut, let’s 
repair this bunk, or we won’t have any place to 
sleep.” 

While some of the boys were repairing the bunk, 
others got the fire pit mended, and a fire going. Us- 
ing a bunch of birch twigs for a broom, Lou swept 
up the glass from the ground inside the cabin, so 
nobody would cut his feet, and, as the house was 
getting dark inside, Rob unfolded his collapsible 
camp lantern, lit the candle, and hung it from the 
ceiling. It was rapidly getting dark outside, also, 
and preparations were under way for supper, when 
the scouts heard , the click of oars on the river, and 
Peanut’s signal whistle. 

“ What luck ? ” they cried. 


COMPLETING THE LOG CABIN 255 

Peanut and Art scrambled quickly and excitedly 
up the bank. 

“ Lots of it,” Peanut panted. “ We rowed down- 
stream without seeing a single keel rowboat on 
either side, except at Mr. Bowser’s landing, till we 
came almost to the dam. You know, there’s a new 
Fresh Air home up on the hill, and they’ve got a 
boat landing, and a couple of keel-boats. We landed 
in the bushes up-stream a way, and sneaked up on 
the kids, who were playing out front. We wriggled 
on our bellies under some bushes, and listened to 
’em talk.” 

“ Gee, some of ’em swear awful ! ” put in Art. 

“ Pretty soon we heard one of ’em say something 
about a hut, and then another one said, ‘ Wait till to- 
morrow morning, when we get after it with an ax ! ’ 
Then me and Art sneaked back and rowed up here. 
It’s them, all right.” 

Well, I guess we'll be here to-morrow jnorning,” 
cried the excited and angry scouts. 

The scout meeting around the camp-fire that even- 
ing, after supper, became a council of war, with Rob, 
as assistant scout master, presiding, because Mr. 
Rogers wasn’t able to be there. The following plan 
was finally adopted. The body of the scouts were 
to go behind the grove, up-stream, where they would 


256 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

be hidden both from the hut and from the river 
down-stream, but where they could see across the 
river to the opposite bank. Peanut was to cross the 
river, and take his post on the bank where the scouts 
could see him, and where he could see the boat 
landing at Hut Point. He was to take the signal 
flags with him, and the moment the Fresh Airies had 
landed and gone up the bank he was to signal to the 
other scouts, who would creep in silence through the 
grove and catch the marauders red handed. Art, 
meanwhile, was to hide in the bushes just up-stream 
from the landing, on the bank, and as soon as he, 
too, saw Peanut’s signal, he was to rush down and 
capture their boat, so they would have no means of 
escape. 

But we’ll have to hide our own boats,” suggested 
Piper, “ or they’ll know we are here.” 

“Great head,” said Peanut. “We’ll do that, all 
right.” 

After the plans were decided on, everybody pre- 
pared to turn in. Alas ! the bunks would hold only 
eight boys, so lots were drawn to see who would 
sleep inside. 

“We’ll have to build a second tier of bunks over 
these, like the upper berths in a steamer,” said Rob. 
“ We’ve also got to build a table and some chairs.” 


COMPLETING THE LOG CABIN 257 


“ And we’ve got to make a new door and put a 
padlock on it,” said Art. 

** And I’ve got to put new glass in my window ! ” 
wailed Peanut. “ Gee, you fellers will get the first 
crack at those Fresh Airies in the morning I I’ve 
got to row all the way across the river. Hit ’em an 
extra wallop for me. Art.” 

You bet I will,” said Art, as he rolled up in his 
blanket beside the fire pit. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


The Fight 

I F Prattle was the scouts’ dinner bell, Art was their 
alarm clock. As usual, he was the first one awake. 
There was a mist over the river, and the sun was 
not yet up. He crawled out of his blanket softly, 
put on his shoes, and tiptoed down to the boat land- 
ing, shoving off one of the boats, which he rowed up- 
stream out of sight around a bend and tied in the 
bushes. Then he came back along the bank and rowed 
a second one up to the same place. After this he 
came back by the spring, washed, brushed his teeth, 
and sneaking into camp through the pines he picked 
up a kettle and began to beat it like a drum. 

Half a dozen sleepy heads were poked out of the 
cabin door, and various forms rolled over in their 
blankets on the ground. 

“ I can’t get ’em up, I can’t get ’em up, I can’t get 
’em up in the morning,” chanted Art. “ Come on, 
you lazy bunch ! Wake up ! We’ve got a fight on 
to-day.” 

That word brought everybody out of his blanket 
258 


THE FIGHT 


259 


“Yes, and we’ve got to eat breakfast, and hide 
all signs of our being here,” Art added, “ so hurry- 
up.” 

The scouts were up by now, and on their way to 
the spring. Art had the fire going when they got 
back with the sleep washed out of their eyes, and 
soon the coffee-pot was again steaming. 

“ It’s only half-past six now,” said Rob, looking 
at his watch. “We don’t need to swallow our food 
whole. The Fresh Airies won’t be here yet.” 

“ Call ’em just Freshies,” Peanut amended. 

“ Amendment carried,” said Rob. 

As soon as breakfast was over, the boys carefully 
cleaned up all signs of their presence and carried 
their blankets and cooking utensils and hatchets out 
behind the grove. Then they came back to hide 
their boats. 

“Gee, where are the boats?” came the voice of 
Piper from the beach. “ Hi, fellers, somebody’s 
swiped two of our boats in the night I ” 

“ Is that so ? ” cried Art, with a wink at Peanut. 
“Who could have done that ? ” 

Everybody except Peanut and Art rushed after 
Piper to the beach and began looking wildly up 
and down stream. Suddenly Lou, however, saw 
Art grinning, and began to laugh. 


260 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


“ Stung ! ” he said. “ Art hid ’em before we were 
up ; didn’t you, Art?” 

“I don’t know anything about the boats,” Art 
replied. 

' ^ “ No, and you don’t seem to care anything,” said 
Rob. “ Come on, fellows, he’s hidden ’em all right. 
Peanut, you take the boat here, and the signal flags, 
and row across till you find a good place to hide, 
where we can see you from behind the grove. Art, 
you go up-stream on the bank. The rest follow me.” 

Peanut got in and rowed out on the current, while 
the body of the scouts disappeared into the pines 
and Art moved up the bank. Peanut didn’t have to 
row far before he found a spot on the opposite shore 
where he could hide the boat under some bushes, 
hide himself behind them, and watch the landing. 
He took the flags and signaled across to the group 
of boys behind the pine woods, “ Can you see me?” 
He couldn’t see them, but he supposed they were 
watching him. Dropping his flags, he scanned the 
opposite shore. In among the last of the pines he 
saw two white handkerchiefs wave, like semaphore 
flags, and signal back “ O. K.” He knew, of course, 
that Art could see him, because he could see Art, 
crouched down behind a bush where the stream 
from the spring fell into the river. 


THE FIGHT 


261 


Everything was ready, then I There was nothing 
to do but wait. It seemed to Peanut as if hours 
went by, though probably it wasn’t more than one 
hour, before he heard voices far down-stream, and 
presently saw two boats, clumsily rowed, coming 
toward the point. As they drew nearer, he could 
make out four boys in each boat. He didn’t dare 
to signal yet, for fear they would see his flags, as 
they were coming directly toward him. Fairly trem- 
bling with excitement, he crouched behind his bush 
and watched. 

The two boats drew near. “There it is I” he 
heard one of the boys in them shout, and a figure 
stood up, with an ax in its hand. 

The clumsy rowers turned the boats in toward the 
point, beached them, and the eight boys started up 
the bank. Peanut leaped to his feet and signaled, 
“ Go to it ! ” 

Then he dropped the flags, sprang into his 
own boat, and rowed madly toward Hut Point. 
He was not in midstream when Art had reached 
the two boats of the Freshies, shoved one of them 
adrift, leaped into the other, and was pushing off 
in it 

He was not more than in midstream when he 
heard the scout yell go up at the hut, and saw the 


262 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

eight Freshies come diving down the bank to their 
boats. The boats weren’t there! The boats were 
out on the current, with Art sitting in one of them, 
and the other now tied to the stern of the first. With 
a cry of surprise and rage, the eight Freshies turned 
at bay to meet the charge of the scouts down the 
bank in pursuit, headed by Rob and Prattie. The 
scouts were coming on the dead run, and as the 
bank was steep they landed on the eight Freshies 
like so many cannon-balls. They didn’t stop to 
fight, nor even to strike. With heads low, as if 
bucking the line, they went right in under the blows 
of the eight astonished boys on the beach, and threw 
six of them into the river. The other two managed 
to dodge and stay on shore, but each of them was 
thrown down and had a couple of scouts on top of 
him in a twinkling. 

The water here was only two or three feet deep 
just offshore, so that the Freshies regained their 
feet, and some of them tried to climb back. Two or 
three, however, struck out for the opposite bank. 
Peanut and Art made for them. “ Go back, or we’ll 
hit you over the heads 1 ” they yelled. 

The boys went back. 

The instant one of them stepped to shore, he was 
set upon and overpowered. 


THE FIGHT 263 

“ Quick I ” shouted Peanut to Art. “ Take the 
boats round the point! Let’s get into this 1 ” 

He and Art rowed frantically to the south side of 
the point, tied the boats to a root, scrambled up 
the rocks, rushed past the hut, and came diving down 
the bank to the beach. 

Two Fresh Airies still stood defiantly in the water. 
The other six were flat on the beach, with a couple 
of scouts sitting on each one, tying their hands be- 
hind them with handkerchiefs knotted together. 

Art and Peanut waited for no parleying. Into the 
water they both went, grabbed one of the boys, 
hauled him to shore, and turned him over to Rob and 
Prattie. He was kicking and screaming and trying 
to bite, but as he wasn’t nearly so large as Rob, the 
patrol leader grabbed him by the wrists, jerked his 
arms behind his back, and held him as in a vise, 
while Prattie bound him. 

“ You see what’s coming to you I ” cried Peanut, 
at the last boy in the water. “ Better come in before 
we go after you I ” 

This boy, who was about Peanut’s size, with a 
sharp, keen face and dark eyes, took a look out at 
the river, saw no boats, and without a word started 
to swim for the other bank. 

Art had no coat on. He now kicked off his shoes 


264 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

and his trousers, almost with one motion, took a long 
scoop dive into the river, and plunging his face for- 
ward he swam the Daniels’ kick as only he could 
swim it, after the escaping Fresh Airie. Art had a 
medal for swimming, and there wasn’t any boy around 
Southmead who could touch him in the water. He 
had overhauled the fugitive by midstream, and just 
as he came alongside he raised one arm out of the 
water and brought his open hand down on the other’s 
head, at the same instant throwing himself up onto 
the other’s shoulders, so that his whole weight bore 
down on the swimmer and pressed him clean under. 
Art kept him under for a few seconds, while he turned 
around. Then, with his hand clutching the fugitive’s 
hair, he let him come up. The poor boy was so 
breathless with his efforts and this sudden ducking 
that Art dragged him several feet toward the beach 
before he recovered enough to take a stroke himself. 
By that time, he was too busy trying to keep above 
water to fight back, and Art soon had him in the 
shallows, where Peanut was waiting to drag him 
ashore. 

Wet, dripping, sullen, he stood on the beach, look- 
ing at his tied and squirming companions and at the 
dozen or more scouts who were sitting on top of 
them or gathered angrily about him, 


THE FIGHT 265 

“Well, what have you got to say for yourself?” 
asked Rob. 

“Took two of yez to get every one of us I” he 
sneered. 

“ Is that so ? ” said Art, standing in front of him 
with his shirt tails dripping. “ I suppose it took two 
of us to haul you in out of the river, eh ? Do you 
want to try to escape again ? ” 

“ Well, yez couldn’t do it on land ! ” said the boy. 

“ Couldn’t we ? ” cried Peanut. “ Gee, I could lick 
you myself in about two minutes.” 

“ You’re a liar ! ” shouted the boy. 

“ Am I ? ” said Peanut ; “ we’ll see. Come on.” 

“ Aw, how’ll I git fair play ? ” whined the other. 
“ All my side is bound.” 

“You’ll get fair play, all right, you coward,” cried 
Rob. “ We aren’t your kind ; we aren’t sneaks.” 

“ Well, I gotter have a second, an’ somebody ter 
hold the watch fer me.” 

“ Hold the what ? ” cried Peanut. 

“ He thinks he’s going to fight in rounds, like a 
prize-fight,” said Rob. “See here, you, this is no 
prize-fight, and there won’t be any rounds. You fight 
till you’re licked. That’s what’s coming to you. If 
you lick, we’ll give you back your boats and send you 
home, with a couple of kicks apiece. Now, go to it I ” 


266 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


Rob let go of the boy’s wrists, and he sprang at 
Peanut with a yell. The other scouts dragged their 
captives to their feet, still keeping hold of them, and 
formed a ring around the two combatants on the lit- 
tle narrow beach. 

“ Look out he don’t fight foul. Peanut,” cried Art. 
“ Keep under him. Get him down ! ” 

Peanut was perfectly cool. He was one of those 
good-natured boys who seldom get angry, more than 
on the surface, but when they do get really “ mad,” 
mean business. Moreover, Peanut knew how to box. 
He was quick of eye and arm, and had boxed often 
in the club house with the larger scouts. He met the 
Freshie’s first rush with a square punch on the nose 
that brought blood. 

The scouts yelled. 

But the boy was no slouch with his fists, either, 
and he bore down on Peanut, clinched, and landed 
two jabs on his face, one cutting his lip and the other 
cracking him over the eye. Peanut ducked from the 
clinch, landing a punch on the other’s stomach as he 
ducked, and backed away. 

‘‘ This ain’t a boxing match ; throw him ! ” yelled 
Art again, as the other once more rushed. 

Peanut met his rush in a way that surprised him. 
He dove head down far under his arms, right for his 


THE FIGHT 


267 


knees, and threw him heavily just as an end-rush 
throws a half-back. These poor slum boys from the 
hard paved city streets had never played football, 
and Peanut’s attack was totally unexpected. As the 
other crashed down helplessly to the sand, Peanut 
unlocked his grip around his opponent’s knees and 
with a quick wriggle of his body crawled up and 
struck for the wind. He got in one good blow be- 
fore the Freshie had recovered, and followed that ad- 
vantage up with a second. As his opponent gasped 
for breath. Peanut leaped over him, grabbed his 
wrists, and held him down. The other boy now got 
his breath, and began to kick and struggle to get out 
from under Peanut. Peanut, holding his own face 
back and to one side, let go of the other’s left wrist 
with his own right hand, and struck him a stinging 
blow across the face with his open palm, hurting 
without injuring him. 

“ Had enough ? ” he cried. 

“ No,” panted the Freshie, swinging with his left, 
and kicking and squirming. 

Peanut struck him again, this time still harder, as 
the boy had reached his face with his left hand. 

The Freshie gave a cry of pain. Peanut sat still 
harder on his stomach, and struck a third time. 

That’s enough,” moaned the boy on the ground. 


268 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

‘‘ I think it is I ” said a new voice suddenly, over 
their heads. 

Everybody looked up to the top of the bank. 
There stood Mr. Bowser and the scout master. It 
was Mr. Rogers who had spoken. His face was very 
stern. 

“ Get up, Peanut, and look at me with your one 
good eye ! ” he commanded. 

Peanut rose, and put his hand instinctively over 
the eye which had been struck and was fast swelling 
up. The other boy rose, too, and began to wipe his 
bleeding nose. 

‘‘ What does this mean ? ” the scout master asked. 

“ Gee,” cried Peanut, ‘‘ we found these fellers 
smashing our hut with an ax, and we ran ^em all in. 
This one here said we couldn’t ’a’ done it if we 
hadn’t been two to one, and I — I — I was showin’ 
him I ” 

“Well, you’ve shown him enough,” said Mr. 
Rogers, sternly, though Rob noticed that Mr. Bowser 
turned away to hide a smile. “ What are you going 
to do with these boys now, and who are they ? ” 

“ They are Fresh Air kids from that farm down by 
the dam, sir,” said Rob. “ They smashed up the hut 
some while we were away — Sunday, I guess — and 
they came back with an ax to finish it to-day. We 


THE FIGHT 


269 


caught 'em at it. I don’t think you can blame us for 
being mad, sir. The scouts have worked pretty hard 
building this house.” 

“ I don’t blame you for being .mad, Rob,” said Mr. 
Rogers. *‘But I don’t like to see you fighting. 
Peanut, there, isn’t pretty with only one eye 1 I want 
to find out why these boys tried to smash your house. 
Have you done anything to them ? ” 

“ We never laid eyes on ’em till now ! ” Art ex- 
claimed. They just came and did it.” 

“ Why did you do it ? ” Mr. Rogers demanded of 
the boy Peanut had fought, who seemed to be the 
ringleader. 

‘‘ Gee, I dunno,” he said. “ We seen the others 
buildin’ it from the river, an’ we thought it would be 
fun.” 

‘‘ Was it ? ” asked Mr. Bowser, with a twinkle in 
his eyes. 

The Freshie did not reply. 

“ I’ll tell you why you did it,” Mr. Rogers went 
on, coming down the bank, and putting his hand on 
the boy’s shoulder. “ You thought the boys up 
here were different from you city chaps — ‘ Rubes,’ 
maybe you called ’em, or ‘ hayseeds ’ — and you’d 
horse ’em. Well, they’re not a bit different. Peo- 
ple are just the same, in the country or the city. 


270 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

Now, do you know what you are going to do to- 
morrow ? You’re all coming up to the village and 
play a game of baseball with the scouts, and I’ll 
umpire and lick the first man that starts a fight, even 
if it’s Peanut I Untie their hands, scouts ! ” 

The scouts obeyed, and the eight boys, six of them 
soaking wet, stood as amazed by the new turn of 
events as they had been by the first attack. 

“ What’s your name? ” Mr. Rogers asked Peanut’s 
foe. 

“Joe Michellini,” said he. 

“ Joe, this is Peanut Morrison,” Mr. Rogers added, 
with a laugh. “You’ve met him already. Now 
shake hands with him.” 

The two boys grinned rather sheepishly and 
shook hands. 

“ Youse — youse is all right ! ” exclaimed Joe. 

“ Some scrapper yourself,” said Peanut. 

“ Well, well,” exclaimed Mr. Bowser, “ the Battle 
of Hut Point seems to be over.” 

“ How did you folks get here, anyway ? ” Art 
asked suddenly. 

“ We walked down from the village,” said Mr. 
Rogers. “ Thought we’d surprise you.” 

“ Gee, you did all right,” said Peanut. 

“ And now,” Mr. Rogers added, “ you’d better let 


THE FIGHT 


271 


these boys go home and get some dry clothes. 
Boys, be on hand to-morrow at two o’clock, at the 
diamond. Now, will you all promise us you won’t 
hurt this hut again ? ” 

“ Yes, sir,” said the eight boys. 

“ Get ’em their boats, then, Art.” 

Art brought the two boats around, and the scouts 
watched the eight Freshies depart down-stream. 

“ Gee, I think they got off too easy,” shrilled 
Piper. 

“ They learned their lesson,” said the scout master. 
“ What more do you want ? You have a blood- 
thirsty mind. Piper. Good scouts try to do every- 
body a good turn, remember. You’ve done these 
poor city kids, that haven’t any decent homes and 
some of ’em, probably, never enough to eat, a good 
turn in letting ’em off easy. Now, if you’re really 
good scouts, you’ll give ’em a good time to-morrow.” 

“We’ll lick ’em about fifteen to nothin’, just the 
same,” Piper replied. 

“ Well, I’ve no objection to that,’’ laughed the 
scout master. 

“ Come on,” said Rob. “ We’ve got to gather up 
our stuff now.” 

“ Oh, rats ! ” cried Peanut. “ I left the signal flags 
across the river. I must ’a’ been excited ! ’ 


272 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

I guess we all were/' said Art, putting on his 
trousers. 

“ What did you have your pants off for ? Mr. 

Bowser asked. 

“ Had to go swimming for one of 'em ; he tried 
to escape," Art answered. 

Mr. Bowser grinned. “You scouts are ready for 
anything, aren't you ? " 

“ I’m most ready for lunch," said Prattie. 

The rest of the scouts set up a howl. 

“ Gee whiz, after a fight like that, and all Prattie can 
think of is grub 1 " cried Peanut, rolling up his blanket. 

“ Well, I guess you'll be hungry by the time you 
get home," said Prattie, as he climbed into the first 
boat. 

“ Maybe," said Peanut. “ M-m ! I hope ma has 
beefsteak ! " 

“You’d better put the beefsteak on your eye," 
said Art. 

“ What for ? " shrilled Piper. 

“ To keep it from getting black, of course,” Art 
answered. 

“ Gee, I wish / had a black eye as a souvenir I ’’ 
Piper retorted, heroically. 

“ Oh, very well. I’ll give you one,” laughed Pea- 
nut, as he made a pass at him. 


THE FIGHT 


^ 12 > 

Piper, with a shrill shout, dodged into the boat 
and the flotilla moved home up-stream. 

The scout master and Mr. Bowser turned away 
through the grove. 

“ He was giving it to him good, though ! ” Mr. 
Bowser was saying, with a twinkle in his eye. “ I 
like that boy.” 


CHAPTER XXV 


Why Peanut Didn’t Go t6 the Swamp Again 

M eanwhile, however, during the entire sum- 
mer, Art had not lost sight of his plan to go 
back to the Swamp in the fall and get a bear. The 
easiest way for the Southmead boys to earn money 
in the summer was by caddying at the golf club, so 
Art caddied on Saturdays, and through the week as 
much as he could find the time for — or the inclina- 
tion. He hated to caddy. Art hated to be in a 
position where he was taking part in a game, but 
not playing it. Here he had to tote around a heavy 
bag of clubs, for somebody else to use I It was 
often hot, and he would much rather have been 
swimming, or fishing. But he wanted that bear ! 

Peanut was caddying, too. But he rather liked to 
caddy, because, unlike Art, he always got interested 
in the game, and told the man he was caddying for, 
if that man happened to be a stranger to the course, 
what clubs to use, and how far his ball lay from the 
hole. Poor Peanut didn’t have much hope that he 
could save enough to get him to the Swamp again, 
because his parents were poor, and they expected 
?74 


WHY PEANUT DIDN’T GO AGAIN 275 


him to earn the money for his school clothes in his sum- 
mer vacations. But he talked cheerfully with Art about 
going, and heroically refrained from candy (which 
was his passion) in order to save more money. 
Meanwhile Joe Donovan was working hard, and 
saving, too, for he had resolved to take a week off 
in November, his first vacation since he was gradu- 
ated from the Southmead High School more than a 
year before. 

Well, autumn finally came, school began again, 
Rob went away to college and sent back pictures of 
the football team to Art and Peanut, and poor Pea- 
nut held long debates with his father and mother 
about going again to the Swamp. He had saved 
between $40 and $50 during the summer. It was 
more than enough for his winter clothes. There 
was still caddying at the links, too, to bring him in 
more. He would really have the money to go to 
the Swamp with. 

“ And I don’t see why I shouldn’t go,” he said. 
“ It’s my money. I earned it. Art’s going. He’s 
got a gun. I’m not even asking you for a gun, 
though Art’s dad gave him his gun.” 

‘‘ Sure, you want to go to college, don’t you, and 
be a smart man ? ” said Peanut’s father, who was 
himself only a laborer. “ You don’t want to be 


276 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

digging on the road, like me? And how are you 
goin’ to college if you donT save some money, and 
me with other children cornin’ along behind you ? ” 
Well, I’ll earn some more 1 ” Peanut declared. 

“ Oh, you’ll earn some more, is it ? And you’ve 
got a lot of time to be earnin’ maybe a thousand 
dollars, and you a sophomore in high school al- 
ready ! ” 

“ Well, I think it’s pretty tough ! ” Peanut de- 
clared, his eyes getting suspiciously moist. 

“ Sure it’s tough,” his mother said, putting her 
arm on his shoulder, “ but it would be tougher if 
you hadn’t seen the Swamp, wouldn’t it?” 

Peanut shook her arm off, and stamped out of the 
house. “ It’s my own money,” he muttered. ‘‘ Gee, 
I sweat for it, all right I ” 

He walked up the street to Mr. Rogers’ house and 
found the scout master in his studio. Peanut put 
the case to him. 

Mr. Rogers appeared to think it over carefully. 

** I’d like to go down there to the Swamp, myself, 
next month and get a bear,” he said finally, ‘‘ but I 
can’t. I’ve got to stick right here and paint. I’ve 
got to pay for my winter coal.” 

He didn’t say anything more for a moment or 
two. Peanut, also, was silent. 


WHY PEANUT DIDNT GO AGAIN 277 

“Did Rob send you some of those football 
pictures?” he continued, finally. “Pretty good, 
weren’t they ? I tell you, college is a great thing. 
You have a better time there than you ever had be- 
fore, and pretty nearly better than you ever have 
again, and you learn how to get up in the world, too.” 

“ Yes, I s’pose so,” said Peanut. 

“ You want to go to college, don’t you ? ” 

“ Sure I do.” 

“ Well, now suppose you put that $25 you were 
going to take for this second Swamp trip into the 
bank. It will be nearer $30 by the time you need it 
for college. That’s a good start on a college fund, 
isn’t it ? Don’t you think four years at college is 
worth more than one week in the Swamp ? ” 

“ Sure,” said Peanut, “ but $30 won’t give you 
four years in college.” 

“ Thirty dollars will start you,” said Mr. Rogers. 
“If you don’t start saving now, when will you 
start? Come, Peanut, you’re a good scout. Good 
scouts are thrifty, you know, and save. Good 
scouts are obedient, too. If your father and mother 
don’t want you to go, do you think you’d be a good 
scout if you went ? ” 

“ I s’pose not,” the boy answered weakly, “ but, 
gee, I want to ! ” 


278 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


“ Of course you want to. So do I want to. But 
one trip like that a year is all I can afford. You 
stay at home this time, and we’ll all save up for a 
grand hike next summer. If we try to do too much, 
we’ll get all the parents sore on the scout move- 
ment. We don’t want to do that, do we? We 
don’t want to queer the scouts ? ” 

“ I never thought of that,” said Peanut. 

‘‘ Is it a go, then — or rather a stay ? ” laughed 
Mr. Rogers. ” You’ll put that $25 in the bank ? ” 

“ Sure,” said Peanut. 

“ Shake on it I ” 

The two gave each other the grip, and Peanut 
went out, trying to whistle cheerfully. 

That was how it happened that Art and Joe 
Donovan went after bears alone. 


CHAPTER XXVI 
Art is Off for that Bear 


RT found no difficulty in getting a week ahead 



^ in school, now that he had done it once, and 
he and Joe left on a Monday morning early in 
November, with their equipment cut down to the 
minimum. They wore their hunting clothes, had 
their camp outfits and sweaters in their knapsacks, 
and carried only a small tent and their blankets 
rolled up in a bundle for additional luggage — ex- 
cept, of course, their rifles. They had a rough 
voyage down the coast, and reached Norfolk three 
hours late. At Norfolk they had to wait till four 
o’clock to get a train to Suffolk, twenty miles away, 
a town at the northwest corner of the Swamp, for 
they decided to go into Lake Drummond by this 
route, picking up a guide on the way. They lost 
no time in Suffolk, buying their provisions at once, 
and hiring a darkey to drive them the seven miles 
to the entrance of the Washington Ditch. It was 
quite dark when they arrived at the point in the road 
where the lane leads down to the Ditch, They paid 


n9 


280 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


their driver two dollars for the seven mile haul 
(“And he’s probably stinging us,” said Joe), and 
turned toward the light of a cabin back in the fields 
to the left of the road, tugging their baggage with 
them up the path between rows of withered cotton 
plants. 

This was George Parker’s cabin. George himself 
came to the door. The boys could see his wife and 
two sons, in the candle-light within, sitting round a 
table, eating roast ’coon ! 

“Well,” laughed Art, “I’ve come to get lost 
again ! ” 

Those in the cabin came to the door at the sound 
of his voice, the two young darkeys grinning and 
showing their white teeth. 

“You-all want to get some bears, eh?” asked 
George. “ Well, they is plenty this year, yass, sah. 
Won’ you-all come in ?” 

“ Guess not, thank you,” Art replied. “ But if 
you’ll show us where there’s some wood and water, 
we’ll camp ’round here somewhere, if you’ll take us 
into the Swamp to-morrow.” 

The swamper came out of the cabin and led them 
to the edge of the pine woods just behind, pointing 
out his wood-pile as they passed. While they were 
pitching their tent on the aoft, dry pine-needles, he 


ART IS OFF FOR THAT BEAR 281 


returned with a tin pail of well water, and some hot 
sweet potatoes on a plate, roasted in sugar, appar- 
ently. Anyhow, the sugar was dripping out of 
them, and they smelled delicious. 

The scouts thanked him, and set about getting 
their supper. Before they had finished it, George 
was back again, his two sons just behind him, their 
dark faces and white teeth when they grinned show- 
ing in the firelight. The father talked for an hour 
about the Swamp, and the bears, and a wildcat chase 
of the day before, but the sons said nothing, except 
now and then a Yass, sah,” to confirm one of their 
fathers statements. 

Finally they went back to the cabin, and Joe and 
Art rolled up in their blankets in the tent. 

“ How soft voiced George and the two sons are,’’ 
said Joe. “They don’t seem a bit like some of the 
niggers up our way. They seem more like Indians, 
almost.” 

“I guess it’s because they hupt so much,” said 
Art. “ Hunting kind of makes you quiet.” 

The scouts were up with the sun, but so were the 
occupants of the gray cabin, for the boys saw smoke 
coming from the chimney (which was built on the 
outside at one end), even before they had their own 
fire going. They had finished their coffee and were 


282 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


striking tent, however, before George and one of his 
sons appeared. The two guides had no knapsacks, 
and no blankets. Each, however, had an old meal 
bag, evidently full of provisions, slung over his 
shoulder, and in his hand a gun. Neither gun was 
a modern rifle like Art’s or Joe’s. The father’s was 
a double-barrel muzzle-loader, an old-fashioned 
smooth bore which could be used as shotgun or rifle. 
The son’s was an ancient Springfield rifle, also a 
muzzle-loader. 

“ Will that gun of yours kill a bear ? ” Art asked, 
rather sceptically. 

“ Yass, sah,” the guide replied, with a grin, “ will 
if you hit him.” 

He displayed no interest whatever in Art’s rifle, 
nor in Joe’s, further than to ask them if the}’^ had soft 
nosed bullets. 

“ Of course ; why ? ” asked Art. 

“ Well, sometimes men bring these yere high power 
guns along,” he answered, “ with reg’lar steel bullets 
like they use shootin’ men in war, an’ then mebbe 
they don’ hit the bear through the vitals, an’ he jes’ 
gets away, like he wa’n’t hit ’tall.” 

The party was soon at the Ditch. George Parker 
unlocked the padlock on one of the cypress dugouts 
and got two paddles from under the old mammy’s 


ART IS OFF FOR THAT BEAR 283 

cabin. She came to the door, took a look at Art, 
and cried : 

“ Well, law-zee, if here ain’ the boy that tried to 
walk through de cypress swamp in de dark, an’ shot 
my po’ ol’ black Rastus pig fo’ a bear I ” 

“ Sure,” said Art good-naturedly, “ but I’m going 
to shoot the real bear this time.” 

‘‘ Well, honey chile, I reckon Geo’ge Parker ’ 11 
shoot the bear fo’ you,” she laughed. ‘‘ His ol’ gun, 
it jes’ death on them bears.” 

George grinned, and pushed the boat off. Art 
was in the bow. Joe Donovan, who, of course, had 
never been in the Swamp before and was seeing it 
for the first time, sat just behind. Then came young 
Charlie, and finally his father, who paddled. 

‘‘ Now you-all keep still,” he said, “ an’ have yo’ 
guns ready, an’ watch out sharp up in the gum trees. 
You’ll see ol’ Mr. Bear a-sittin’ on a big limb pullin’ 
a little limb to him with his paw, an’ eatin’ off the 
gum berries.” 

The canoe glided silently and slowly up the black 
Ditch. The old swamper paddled so quietly that 
there wasn’t even a dripping audible from his paddle 
blade. His son Charlie kept his eyes fixed on the 
trees ahead. Art noticed first of all how much 
lighter the whole Swamp was now that the leaves 


284 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

had fallen. The great gum trees rose up like gray 
pillars, and you could sometimes look for a quarter 
of a mile down through the sunny spaces between 
them. Up in the branches, however, he could see 
the little blue gum berries like small plums. There 
were also many of these berries which had fallen and 
were floating on the canal. He and Joe sat very 
still, their fingers near the triggers of their guns, 
their eyes fixed in the tree tops — but one mile, two 
miles, three miles were slowly passed, and still no 
bear. 

Suddenly Charlie gave a tiny warning sound, and 
whispered, “ ’Coon ! ” 

Art and Joe looked where he pointed, to the left. 
Sure enough, a ’coon was walking out on a branch. 

“You take him, Joe, it’s your first chance,” whis- 
pered Art. 

Joe fired. The report cracked through the woods. 
The ’coon turned on the limb and darted back toward 
the trunk. He was almost behind it when Joe fired 
again. This time he fell. The scouts sprang from 
the boat, and ran to the spot. There was no doubt 
about this ’coon being fat. He had been feeding full 
all summer. 

“Well, now we can have a ’coon supper! ” 
Art cried. “ Good work, Joe.” 


ART IS OFF FOR THAT BEAR 285 

“ I suppose, though, we’ve scared off any bear that 
might have been ahead ?” asked Joe. 

The guide shook his head. “ No, sah, mebbe not,” 
he said hopefully. 

But they reached Lake Drummond without seeing 
any, nevertheless. The guide and his son took their 
provision bags into the dilapidated shanty at the dam. 
Art led off Joe to the old camping place, and they 
pitched the tent there at once, and made camp 
ready. 

‘‘ I wonder what George and his son do for blank- 
ets ?” said Joe. 

‘‘ Probably they’ve got some hidden around here,” 
Art answered. ‘‘ They have all sorts of things hid- 
den. I’ll bet they can fish us up a big kettle to par- 
boil the ’coon in.” 

The scouts were too eager to be at their hunting 
again to eat more than a few sandwiches, hastily 
made out of bread and potted ham, and then they 
hid the ’coon and went back to the shanty. 

George and his son were through their frugal lunch 
of cold sweet potatoes. There was a little old rusty 
stove in the shanty, and they had a fire going in it. 

“ What are you going to do for blankets ? ” asked 
Joe. 

The guide got up silently, took a board out of the 


286 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


floor, and disclosed a box beneath. Then he put the 
board back without saying a word. 

But how are we going to boil that ’coon to- 
night ? ” said Art. 

George led the way, still in silence, out of the 
cabin, down the path toward the lake, turned aside by 
a patch of high cane-brake, disappeared into it, and 
emerged with a large black pot, which had evidently 
been often used. He grinned, and put it back again. 

“And now what?” said Art. “Bring on your 
bear!” 

“ Ah reckon’s how we might walk down the lake 
a pace,” said the guide. “ Ah seen bear tracks down 
that-away two days ago.” 

So they started southward along the west bank of 
the lake, the very way Art and Peanut had set out 
that memorable day in the spring, when they nearly 
never came back. The guide walked ahead, Charlie 
brought up the rear, some distance behind. Joe 
Donovan was divided between his desire to keep both 
eyes opened for game, and his wonder at the dark, 
still, lonely lake, where no boat troubled the waters, 
and no hill nor house broke the even line of the for- 
est wall. Art, however, never looked at the lake. 
He was looking for bears. His eyes were on the 
trees ahead. 


CHAPTER XXVII 
Art Gets His Bear 

HEY tramped along the lake shore for three 



A miles without seeing a sign of game, except 
tracks in the mud. There were plenty of those, es- 
pecially of deer. 

“ Don’t care about deer,” said Art. “ We can get 
plenty of deer right up in Berkshire County during 
the open week in November — as many as we can get 
here, I guess. It’s a bear or nothing for me ! ” 

“Still, a venison steak would go pretty well, 
wouldn’t it, Charlie?” said Joe. 

The young negro grinned, showing all his teeth. 

They had now come to a board shanty at the 
southwestern corner of Lake Drummond. Art re- 
called that he and Peanut had passed it. The guide 
turned in from the lake at this point, led them around 
the cabin, and they found themselves on a dimly 
marked wood road. 

“Where does this go?” Art asked, astonished. 
“ Why didn’t Peanut and I cross it when we were 
coming back north that time ? ” 


287 


288 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 


‘‘ Ah reckon you did,” replied George, '' only she 
don’ las’ long this way. She’s all grown up, an’ 
where you-all crossed you couldn’t see nothin’.” 

They walked silently down the old lumber trail. 
It began to get swampier presently, and, to the eyes 
of the scouts, finally was swallowed up entirely in 
the forest. But George kept right on, every now 
and then a bit of rotten corduroy construction ap- 
pearing under foot to show they were still on the 
track. All the party kept their eyes in the trees, but 
nothing appeared. 

At length they came to a spot where the gum trees 
were thick, and where there was a little depression 
holding a pool of water, with mud about the edges. 
Art and the guide gave an exclamation at the same 
moment. There were bear tracks in the mud ! On 
close examination, they saw the tracks differed greatly 
in size. 

“ Cubs ! ” said George. 

He looked about him, found a stump, took a small 
bag from his pocket, and poured the contents on the 
stump. It was sugar. Then he added a little water, 
so that the sugar would stick. 

“ Now,” he said, “ if we-all come yere early in de 
mo’nin’, mebbe we catch mammy bear.” 

The party retraced their steps. After a quarter of 


ART GETS HIS BEAR 


289 


a mile Joe said, “ Well, if it was up to me to find that 
spot in the morning, we’d never get mammy bear I 
Gee whiz, I don’t see how you do it, George. And 
I don’t wonder you and Peanut got lost. Art.” 

“ You jes’ follow de road,” said George. 

“ Yes, but where is the road ? ” Joe laughed. 

“Right yere,” said George, parting some cane- 
brake ahead, and leading them into an open stretch. 

“ Yes, here are our tracks where we came down it,” 
said Art. “ But it's too much for me.” 

“ Ah reckon you jes’ have to be used to it,” 
laughed the guide. 

It was almost dark when they reached camp, the 
November twilight coming on quickly. George took 
charge of the ’coon. It was a pretty sight to see him 
skin it. It was soon parboiling in his old black ket- 
tle, and presently, when the rest of the meal was al- 
most ready, it was spitted on a ramrod and set to 
roasting. 

“ That’s one advantage of the old-fashioned gun,” 
Art laughed. 

This 'coon was tender instead of tough, the boys 
and guides were hungry, and Mr. 'Coon disappeared. 

“ My I I wish Peanut and Rob and Mr. Rogers 
could have a taste of this one ! ” Art cried, smacking 
bis lips, 


290 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

Charlie grinned again, showing his teeth in the 
firelight. 

After supper was cleared away, the two guides 
went back to the old shack, and Art and Joe went out 
on the beach to see the lake by moonlight, for a big 
moon was just rising over the trees. It was cold and 
clear, and the great, dark sheet of water and the 
silent forest looked very lonely and beautiful. The 
boys walked down to the big cypress trees in the 
water, and Joe had his first sight of them by moon- 
light. 

“ They look like ghosts of trees 1 ” he half 
whispered. ‘‘Makes you feel far from home and 
mother, doesn’t it?” 

Then they turned in, to be ready for a start before 
sun-up. 

They were still asleep when George and Charlie 
came down and roused them. There was scarcely a 
hint of dawn in the east. A hasty breakfast of coffee 
and boiled eggs was cooked, and then the two guides 
went into the bushes and hauled out a flat-bottomed 
boat. They had brought their oars from the dugout 
back in the Ditch. The boat had been left with water 
in it, to keep it tight, and still in semi-darkness the 
four embarked and rowed down the lake. 

“ Was this boat in there all last May ? ” ask^d Art. 


ART GETS HIS BEAR 


291 


George shook his head. “ No, sah, we fetched her 
down the Ditch fo^ the huntin^ season,” he laughed. 

“ Well, I thought we couldn’t have missed any- 
thing so big as that right under our noses,” Art 
replied. 

It was light when they reached the shack at the 
southwestern corner of the lake, and the sun was al- 
most showing over the horizon as they left the shore 
behind them and plunged into the dusk of the old 
wood road. 

George led the way, treading very softly, going 
through the cane-brake without shaking it, and keep- 
ing a wary eye ahead. Art and Joe, their guns 
loaded, their nerves tingling with excitement, fol- 
lowed close behind. 

They walked more than a mile in silence. Then 
the guide stopped, and motioned for even greater 
care. They went on slowly, cautiously, fingers on 
triggers, George leading. Suddenly he beckoned 
the boys to come up to him. Creeping close, they 
peered through a bit of cane-brake and ahead, close 
by the stump where they had put the sugar, was a 
large black object and a small black object — a 
mother bear and a cub. The mother was leading the 
way, and they were coming slowly up the open space 
toward the hunters. 


292 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

“You take the big one, Art,” Joe whispered. 
“ This is your party.” 

Whether she heard him, or smelled danger, the 
mother bear suddenly stopped short, and reared up 
on her hind legs. 

“ Give it to her ! ” whispered George. 

Art and Joe both raised their guns and fired. 
The cub went down like a stone, but the big bear, 
with a snarling cry of pain, only staggered, and 
rushed them. Art ejected his shell like lightning, 
but before he could raise his gun George had the 
bear covered. 

“ Let me have her I ” cried Art. 

He fired again, this time at a pointblank range of 
twenty yards, and brought her down in a plunging 
heap, with a bullet through the heart. 

George Parker lowered his gun. “ Ah wasn’t goin’ 
to fire, no, sah,” he said, “ not ’less you missed her 
de secon’ time. But Ah sho’ wanted her covered I ” 

“That’s right,” said Joe. “I had her covered, 
too, but not so quick as you did.” 

Art was out at the body of the bear. It had 
plunged forward, and he could not get it over. 

“ Help me,” he said. “ I want to see where that 
first bullet hit. I can’t understand that.” 

George Parker smiled. “Ah reckon you was a 


ART GETS HIS BEAR 


293 


little nervous, yass, sah,^’ he said. “ Mos’ likely it’s 
yo’ firs’ bear, an’ that makes you shoot high.” 

The four of them turned the bear over. Art had 
shot high. In fact, the ball had barely caught the 
right shoulder, as the beast was standing up, and 
gone clear through the muscle. 

“ That shot wouldn’t stop no bear,” said George. 
” But you got her de secon’ time, yass, sah I ” 
“Guess I was nervous,” said Art, ruefully. “I 
never shot that much over the mark at such a range. 
Well, we got ’em, Joe, and now we’ve got to skin 
’em.” 

“I wonder where papa bear is?” said Joe, as he 
went on and examined the cub. “ Poor little thing I 
Well, if we killed the mother, it’s better to kill the 
cub, too, I suppose. Do you believe the father bear 
is around here, George ? ” 

“Ah don’ hardly reckon likely,” the guide an- 
swered. “ Ah pus’nally never killed a whole family, 
as you might say, together. But maybe he is.” 

They now fell to on the task of skinning the bears. 
That sounds a great deal easier than it was. The 
cub was not so difficult, but the mother bear weighed 
at least two hundred pounds, and a great deal of fat 
adhered to the under side of the skin, which had to 
be removed. It wasn’t a pretty nor a pleasant job. 


294 boy scouts in THE DISMAL SWAMP 

“ Well, if anybody ever tells me the man who gets 
a bearskin rug doesn’t earn it, I’ll call him a liar 1 ” 
said Joe, looking at his hands and trousers. 

“Ditto,” said Art, briefly, pausing to straighten 
his back for an instant, and then returning to work. 

When the bears were skinned, the boys were eager 
to know what part of the meat was best to carry 
back to camp. 

“Ah pus’nally don’ think no part of it is,” said 
George, while Charlie nodded his head in emphatic 
endorsement. 

“ Don’t you* eat it ? ” asked Art, astonished. 

“ Some folks eat it, yass, sah,” the guide answered. 
“ But we-all don’ eat it.” 

“ I thought a bear steak was good,” said Joe. 

“ Well,” said George, “ fresh bear meat am good 
enough if yo’ is pow’ful hungry, an’ ol’ bear meat 
am good enough if yo’ is pow’ful hungry, but bear 
meat a day or two days ol’ is mos’ suttenly bad 
food, yass, sah.” 

“Just the same, we want to try a fresh bear steak 
to-night ; don’t we, Joe ? ” 

“ Sure,” said Joe. 

“Well, Ah reckon you-all better take a shoulder 
of the little cub bear, then,” said George. 

He suited the action to the word, and cut a shoul- 


ART GETS HIS BEAR 295 

der steak from the carcass, wrapping it in some large 
fallen leaves. 

“ Shall we just leave all the rest of this good meat 
here ? ” said Art. 

‘‘ My ol’ woman, she don’ like bear. She wouldn’t 
cook it nohow,” said George. “ Some folks would 
like it, but Ah reckon we’ll jus’ let the turkey-buz- 
zards have it fo’ they Thanksgivin’ dinner.” 

He and Charlie both laughed. 

Art folded his bearskin, and picked it up. It 
was, of course, still fresh, and wet from a prelimi- 
nary washing in the pool. He staggered under the 
weight. 

“ Gee ! ” he exclaimed. ” I’m glad I’m not a bear, 
to carry this around all the time I ” 

“ Let me help,” said Charlie. 

But Art shook his head. “ No,” he replied. “ I’m 
going to tote it myself.” 

And he did, all the way to the boat. But he was 
mighty glad when he got there, and tossed it down 
from his back with a weary sigh. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 

Out of the Swamp for Good 

I T was well past noon when they got back to 
camp, and all hands were hungry. Art and Joe 
took the bear meat and broiled it like a piece of 
steak. The two guides stuck to bacon and sweet 
potatoes. 

The bear meat was tender, and, on the whole, not 
unpleasant. 

‘‘ Still,” said Joe, “ as a regular diet I think I 
should prefer good old beefsteak.” 

“ It isn’t quite so good as ’coon, that’s a fact,” 
Art admitted. “ Kind o’ strong, or something. But 
it’s a lot better than going hungry. Why don’t you 
eat some, George ? ” 

“ Ah reckon yo’ never seen no bear feed,” said 
George. 

“ Why, they eat berries mostly, don’t they ? ” both 
boys exclaimed. 

“ Mos’ly, maybe,” the guide replied, “ but some- 
times Mr. Bear he eats turkey-buzzard food. He 
won’ touch no fresh meat, no, sah, but when the car- 
^96 


OUT OF THE SWAMP FOR GOOD 297 


case gets good an’ high^ then he sometimes comes 
right out into the open field an’ eats it up.” 

“ Well, pigs aren’t what you’d call delicate,” said 
Joe, “and you’re eating bacon.” 

“ Pigs don’ eat no turkey-buzzard food,” George 
retorted. 

He couldn’t be budged from this aversion to bear 
meat, which his son Charlie evidently shared, and 
somehow the meat didn’t taste quite so good to the 
boys after that, either, though Art insisted on finish- 
ing it up. 

After dinner the scouts scrubbed and scoured their 
bearskins, and with George’s help rigged them up 
on board stretchers to dry. There was still plenty 
of daylight left after that was done, so the party 
set out again, this time going to the Washington 
Ditch, and paddling up it in the search for more 
bears. 

About a mile up, they came upon an empty bottle, 
thrust neck down on an upright stick. 

“ What’s that for, I wonder ? ” said Art. 

“ Deer crossing,” said George. “ That yere’s Tom 
Johnson’s mark. He mus’ have been huntin’ this 
mo’nin’.” 

Art examined the bank where the bottle stood, and 
sure enough there was almost a path of deer track 


298 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

coming down to the Ditch, and reappearing on the 
other side. 

“ I suppose you wouldn’t shoot a deer here, then, 
on Tom Johnson’s track ? ” asked Joe. 

“ No, sah, Ah reckon that wouldn’ be fair, like,” 
George replied. 

“ Well 1 ” exclaimed Joe, “ I must say that’s more 
neighborly than hunters are up our way I ” 

They went to the end of the Ditch and back without 
seeing any bear, and on their return Joe and Art took 
the fiat-bottomed boat in the cold twilight and rowed 
down the shore among the cypresses, but still in 
vain. 

“ I guess we’ll have to be contented with our day’s 
work — two isn’t so bad, if one was a cub,” said Joe. 

“’Fraid you’re right,” sighed Art. ‘‘But we've 
got to go home to-morrow. We’ve got to get that 
Friday night boat out of Norfolk. I would like to 
have another pop at a bear, just to prove I could do 
it without getting nervous.” 

They rowed slowly back to camp in the rapidly 
gathering night, and cooked supper. After supper 
George told them more stories of bear hunting, and 
of wildcat chases in winter, when the cats come out 
into the fields and kill cattle, and are chased back 
into the Swamp. 


OUT OF THE SWAMP FOR GOOD 299 

“ Do the bears often rush you, like that one did 
this morning ? ” asked Art. 

“ No, sah, only when they is cubs aroun’,” George 
replied. “ Las’ year me an’ Charlie met a bear an’ 
two cubs, an’ she came right at us, but mos’ly they 
skidoos.” 

What would you do if you didn’t kill the bear, 
and it got to you ? ” asked Joe. 

“ Ah don’ ’xactly know,” George replied. “ Ah 
jes’ reckon Ah wouldn’ let no bear get to me, no, 
sah. They is two bar’ls to ma gun.” 

That’s not exactly an answer,” Joe laughed. ‘‘ But 
I guess you’re right ! ” 

As George and Charlie left for the night, the guide 
told them they might be waked in the morning by a 
deer hunt. 

‘‘ Ah reckon the dawgs’ll be beatin’ in to-morrow 
mo’nin’,” he said. ‘‘You-all watch out along the 
west sho’, an’ you may see a deer come out.” 

Sure enough, as the boys opened their eyes with 
the first hint of dawn, they heard a far-off, deep 
baying to the west. They made a hasty breakfast, 
and joined the guides on the beach. The four got 
into the boat and rowed out along the west shore. 
Hardly had they pushed off when they heard voices. 
A party of hunters came down the brook from the 


300 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

Washington Ditch, bringing their boat, and launched 
it in the lake. 

“ Seen anything ? ” they called to George. 

The two boats now patrolled the shore line, while 
the deep baying of the hounds drew nearer and 
nearer. The sun was just up, and casting long, 
beautiful shadows over the water, where shreds of 
white mist still lingered, when the baying came 
very near, and centred toward the same spot, as 
though the pack were closing in. 

A moment later a fine deer burst through the forest 
wall and, like a flash, took to the water, churning it 
up as he dashed through the shallows. He was sev- 
eral hundred feet from the boats, and with a shout 
the hunting party made toward him, closely followed 
by the scouts’ boat. 

“ We can’t shoot — he’s their deer,” said Art, but 
they’ll lose him if they don’t fire quick I ” 

The deer’s body was almost under when two of 
the hunters fired. The deer kept on, the boats in 
mad pursuit, but as they got into his wake, they saw 
blood in the water. Meanwhile, behind, some of the 
dogs had taken to the water, also, while others were 
baying madly on shore. 

As the scouts knew from their experience on Loon 
Lake at home, a well deer can outswim a flat-bottomed 


OUl OF THE SWAMP FOR GOOD 301 

boat, but this one was wounded, and rapidly losing 
ground. As they drew closer, they could hear his 
agonized pantings, and a moment later they could 
see the fright and agony in his great eyes. 

Joe looked away. “ I couldnT kill that poor crea- 
ture,” he said, I couldn’t ! ” 

Art, who was a born hunter, looked a little dubious 
himself. “I’d — I’d rather it was a bear,” he ad- 
mitted. 

The other boat was now alongside, one of the 
hunters fired at pointblank, and the deer swam no 
more. His pursuers towed him ashore in triumph. 

When this excitement was over, the scouts de- 
cided to break camp, and hunt back up the Ditch 
till noon, eat lunch at the end, and hike back to Suf- 
folk for their four o’clock train. The skins were 
packed, including the ’coon skin, which Art was go- 
ing to try to stuff, and the return journey up the 
Ditch began. 

It was a brilliant autumn morning, almost as warm 
as a Berkshire September, with a soft, balmy quality 
in the air. The sun lit up the gray pillars of the bare 
gum trees and flashed on the dark water ahead. 
But never a bear did they see. 

“I guess the dogs coming through this morn- 
ing scared ’em away,” said Art, sadly “ Well, 


302 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

we got two, anyhow. That’s not so bad in three 
days.” 

Once more at the road, they paid the guides and 
bade them good-bye, ate the last of their provisions 
for lunch, cut a pole and slung the tent, blankets and 
skins on it, in the middle, and each one taking an end, 
they set out toward Suffolk. 

“ Good-bye, Swamp ! ” said Art. “ I don’t sup- 
pose I’ll ever see the Dismal Swamp again,” he added, 
“ but I got my bear ! ” 

“ And I got mine,” laughed Joe, “ if it was a baby. 
Anyhow, I’ve seen the Dismal Swamp, too, so Pea- 
nut hasn’t anything on me now. And a wonderful 
place it is, too. I don’t see why some of us scouts 
don’t go off this way to new places every year.” 

We are going to, now I ” cried Art. 

The seven miles of sandy road to Suffolk lay be- 
tween fields and little farmhouses and gray, negro 
cabins. The fields in summer were full of corn and 
cotton and peanuts. Now, however, the harvests 
were gathered, and they were being reploughed. 
But all the way, just beyond the fields to the east, 
fpr seven miles, rose a solid wall of forest, the west- 
ern edge of the Dismal Swamp. Tramp, tramp, 
tramp, marched the scouts, their heavy bundle sway- 
ing on the pole between them — and always as 


OUT OF THE SWAMP FOR GOOD 303 

they marched the wall of the Swamp marched with 
them. 

“ That is certainly some Swamp ! said Joe. 

“ And it goes five times as far to the south,” Art 
answered. “ Ask Peanut.” 

They were tired, and their arms ached from carry- 
ing the pole, and they were very hot, when they 
reached Suffolk. Two hours later they boarded the 
boat for home, and were soon eating dinner at a 
table, with napkins. 

The next afternoon their steamer got into New 
York spot on time, and left them with a trifle over 
half an hour to catch the train for Southmead. They 
made a dash for the subway, Joe carrying the tent 
and skins, and just managed to catch the train as the 
conductor was crying, “ All aboard I ” 

It was after seven, and dark, when they got off on 
the Southmead platform. There was snow on the 
ground ! 

“ Whew ! ” cried Art, shivering, and yesterday 
we were sweating all the way to Suffolk. Guess 
we’ll need those bearskins.” 

I might make a cap of mine,” Joe laughed, 
good-naturedly. He had often joked about it, but he 
had never once complained that his bear was only a 
cub. 


NOV 29 1913 


304 BOY SCOUTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 

The two scouts walked up to the village, and there 
was Peanut at the post-office. With a yell, he dashed 
toward them. 

“ Hi, Art, did you get one ? ” he called. “ Didn’t 
expect you till to-morrow.” 

“ You bet yer,” said Art. “ We each got one.” 

The boys forgot their supper, hastening to Mr. 
Rogers’ house instead and dragging him from his, 
to unpack and exhibit the smelly skins — which were 
not yet thoroughly cured. 

Peanut felt the fur, and held the long claws in his 
hand, wistfully. But what he said was, “ Good work, 
Art, I’m glad you got it I ” 

Mr. Rogers patted him silently on the shoulder. 

At the next scout meeting, the two skins were 
proudly displayed at the club house, and Art was a 
hero. 

“ I’ll tell you one thing, though,” said Joe, “ there’s 
no need for any of you to be stick-at-homes. I’m 
going with Art and Peanut and Rob on next sum- 
mer’s trip, you bet, and there ought to be at least a 
dozen more of you along.” 

“ To the Dismal Swamp ?” asked somebody. 

“ No,” said Art and Peanut in one breath, “ some- 
where new ! ” 


THE END 



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